The Presidency and the PDP yesterday fired back at former head of state Muhammadu Buhari over his comments on Monday when he said rigging the 2015 elections could ignite crisis and that the Federal Government is the biggest Boko Haram.
National publicity secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, Olisa Metuh, told a news conference in Abuja yesterday that Buhari's "undemocratic, unpatriotic and un-statesmanly" comments portrayed him as being "blood thirsty." Buhari was quoted to have said when he received a Niger State CPC delegation in Kaduna on Monday that "in 2015, there must be a free and fair election or there will be a serious crisis."
Metuh said those comments amounted to "another build-up to Buhari's relish of funeral train.... We condemn in no uncertain terms this shameful call for the spill of blood of innocent Nigerians to acquire political power.
"We appreciate Buhari's frustration and antagonism towards the PDP. He has lost three times at the polls. But is Buhari really a democrat? Why is the blood of innocent Nigerians the only thing sufficient to quench his thirst for power?"
The Presidency, in a statement in Abuja yesterday by President Jonathan's spokesman Reuben Abati, said Buhari's comments were "unfortunate" and portrayed him as a regional leader.
Abati said, "We now understand what his protégé and former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Malam Nasir El-Rufai, meant when he wrote in a public letter in October of 2010, telling Nigerians that Buhari remains 'perpetually unelectable' and that Buhari's 'insensitivity to Nigeria's diversity and his parochial focus are already well-known.' Who can know Buhari better than his own political associate?
"Come to think of it, as the CPC presidential candidate in the 2011 election, how many states in the Federation did he visit to campaign for votes? Buhari never bothered to campaign in the southern part of the country and consistently played up the North-South divide to the chagrin of patriotic and well-meaning Nigerians. As the results revealed, Nigerians will never vote for anyone who wants to divide the country. Is Buhari going to continue to be a sectional leader?"
In his comments on Monday, Buhari said there were three categories of Boko Haram, and the Federal Government is the biggest of the three.
"The Federal Government led by President Jonathan is not Boko Haram," Abati said in his reaction yesterday.
He added: "Boko Haram means Western Education is sin. That being the case, one wonders how a government that devoted the largest sectoral allocation in the 2012 budget to education could be said to be Boko Haram.
"Between 1983, when Buhari forcefully seized power from the democratically elected administration of President Shehu Usman Shagari, and 2012, no other administration has committed the same quantum of resources as the Jonathan administration to education in the part of Nigeria that has witnessed the most Boko Haram-related insecurity.
"Only on April 10, 2012, President Jonathan commissioned the first of 400 Federal Government Model Almajiri Schools, equipped with modern facilities such as a Language Laboratory, Qur'an Recitation Hall, classrooms and dormitories as well as a clinic, vocational workshop, dining hall and quarters for the Mallams. As Nigerians read this, more of such schools have been completed.
"We now challenge Major General Buhari (rtd) to tell Nigerians what he has done, whether in his capacity as the head of a military junta or in his private capacity, to bring education to vulnerable children. If he cannot live up to this challenge, perhaps he has to reassess who really is Boko Haram.
"Buhari claims that the Federal Government does not listen. Such an accusation ought not to emanate from a man overthrown by his own hand- picked colleagues in the military for refusing to listen to advice and behaving as if he had a monopoly of knowledge."
On Monday, Buhari had also accused the Federal Government of destroying the petroleum sector through corruption.
In his reaction, Abati said Buhari "also boasts of his knowledge of the Petroleum Industry because of his time as Federal Commissioner for Petroleum. We wonder why he did not boast of the infamous scandal that occurred in that ministry where under his watch billions of naira (in the 1970s) were reported stolen, a matter which led to the setting up of the Justice Ayo Irikefe panel."
Daily Trust