The Nigerian presidency has
worded another stern note to Atiku Abubakar, Nigeria’s former vice-president
and defeated candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, asking him to stop
daydreaming, whipping up emotional sentiments and devaluing the Buhari
administration.
Femi Adesina, President Buhari’s
special adviser on media and publicity sent out the new note, warning him
against the constant opportunism exhibited in his statements and attempts at
every turn to denigrate the government.
The latest volley from the seat
of power was triggered by Atiku’s comment on a disputed report by Wall Street
Journal that over a thousand soldiers were secretly buried by the military in
unmarked graves in Maiduguri.
Before the Defence Headquarters
debunked the report as fictive, Atiku had lashed on to it, asked for a probe
and then hit the Buhari government in the jugular, by describing the secret
burials “grand scale of deceit” under a democracy.
But government said the defeated
politician’s constant criticism is misplaced and a waste of time, since he will
never be invested with power via the route.
“In vain does anybody labour to
devalue the government and its military, thinking it would fall into a grand
plan to get into office through artifice. The campaigns and elections for 2019
are long over. The country has moved on. And those who know it actually know
it”, Adesina said.
Read the full statement:
“First, it was laughable, now it
gets progressively pitiable, to see and hear efforts by presidential candidate
of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the last general elections, Alhaji
Atiku Abubakar, appeal to the emotions of Nigerians, particularly members of
the judiciary, perchance it would influence decision in the ongoing legal
tussle over the result of the presidential poll.
“When the Supreme Court recently
pronounced the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate as due winner of Osun
State gubernatorial contest, Alhaji Abubakar, a former Vice President, had
chided the court, saying it should have considered “the pulse of the nation,”
and reflected it in the judgment.
“That was when the jigsaw puzzle
began to fall in place. Were most of the challenges in the country being
orchestrated by hidden hostile hands, who think such would influence the
judiciary, which would consider the so-called “pulse of the nation” in arriving
at judgment on the presidential poll?
“Before and after the Osun State
judgement, the PDP candidate had always been quick to play up negative
developments in the country, the latest of which is the tendentious story by
Wall Street Journal, alleging that about one thousand Nigerian soldiers had
been recently killed by Boko Haram and Islamic State of West Africa terrorists,
and secretly buried by Nigerian military authorities.
“The military has duly countered
the story, educating the Wall Street Journal on the hollowness of its
publication. But Alhaji Abubakar has quickly weighed in on the matter, as part
of his gambit to whip up emotions, and perhaps get the judiciary to reflect the
“pulse of the nation” in its judgment.
“According to the PDP candidate,
who lost the last February poll by nearly four million votes, as released by the
electoral umpire, he could “not fathom that in the space of a year, scores of
great patriots were killed and buried secretly without their families being
told.”
“In an apparent afterthought and
doublespeak, he added that he was hesitant to believe that “such grand scale of
deceit is even possible under a democracy, such as Nigeria is expected to be.”
“The above, rather than mitigate
Alhaji Abubakar’s position, gives him out as someone who denigrates the
country’s democracy, which he was part of building, in his heyday, before
unbridled ambition blinded.
“Yes, soldiers fighting
insurgency and terrorism are great patriots. But the same can’t be said of
anyone quick to believe any negative story about his country, however fictive
and lacking in verity as the story could be. Well, except such person had the
motive of whipping up negative sentiments and emotions, so that the judiciary
could respond to the “pulse of the nation and reflect it.”
“We have told Alhaji Abubakar and
his co-travellers that the judiciary would always come to conclusions, drawing
from matters of the law placed before it, and not sentiments or so-called
“pulse of the nation.”
“Therefore, in vain does anybody
labour to devalue the government and its military, thinking it would fall into
a grand plan to get into office through artifice. The campaigns and elections
for 2019 are long over. The country has moved on. And those who know it
actually know it”.
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