The Buhari Campaign Organisation has accused the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of a plot to release a series of wild, unsubstantiated allegations against the President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, including their friends and family members, in the next few weeks.
Festus Keyamo, the organisation’s spokesperson made the accusation in a statement responding to an earlier allegation by the PDP that the president’s relatives own shares in Etisalat Nigeria and Keystone Bank.
“With the latest revelation,” the statement explained, “the said shares are rather linked to relatives of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, it has become a case of the thief calling the farm owner the thief, as the Yorubas would say, in a popular proverb.
“These impending wild allegations would naturally border on corrupt practices, without any evidential basis.”
Saying that the purpose is to attempt to dent the greatest forte of the president and vice president, which, the statement added, is their personal integrity, ahead of the 2019 elections, it explained that
the latest tactics of the main opposition is premised on the following grounds:
“Since their stuttering campaigns started, they have felt the pulse of Nigerians and realized Nigerians have not forgotten their misdeeds of 16 years whilst in office.
“They have decided to run a campaign of “we-are-all-corrupt” rather than defend their sordid records of merciless looting of the public purse, which has brought us to where we are today.
“The aim is to push Nigerians to equate an Alhaji Atiku Abubakar with President Muhammadu Buhari on matters of corruption. They want to deceive Nigerians to think that the 2019 elections is really a choice between two ‘corrupt’ persons.
“By repeating the lies a million times, they aim to get Nigerians to begin to give some serious thought to the lies. This is how the ‘Jubrin from Sudan’ story started, before even some well-exposed and educated Nigerians were nearly converted on that issue.
“Their latest desperate diversionary tactics is because even the most uneducated Nigerian has now understood that all the issues upon which the main opposition is campaigning are self-indicting issues, especially on the economy and security.”
The 16 years of disastrous governance, which he said President Buhari has just started re-building, is the foundation for the challenges in the said sectors.
He said Nigerians should brace up for six weeks of despicable lies from the pit of hell against the president and vice president, to try to suggest to Nigerians that the president and his deputy are part of the league of looters to which the PDP belongs.
“But Nigerians should understand that the choices before them have never been this clear: It is between a fugitive from the law in America and a President who has never been accused of stealing anything in his entire life and is respected both locally and internationally.
“It is between a man who claims he wants to ‘get Nigeria working again’ yet has always refused to pay his taxes as at when due and a man who has never cheated the Nigerian State.”
He said the PDP presidential candidate has since kept an ominous silence over this damaging allegation of irresponsible and deliberate tax evasion that is now before a court of law.
He added that whilst the president and his vice are prepared and willing to answer any genuine inquiry raised about their stewardship, Nigerians should always ask the critical questions as to “where”, “when”, “how”, names, dates, addresses, etc in respect of any allegation raised by the opposition, before giving any credence to it.
“This is because, as the Atiku Campaign continues to fall apart on a daily basis, we may hear such desperate allegation from them that President Buhari has sold the buildings in Aso Rock to the Israelis or Americans.”