The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has demanded an apology from President Muhammadu Buhari for suggesting that he has the power to pick a successor to “hand over to” by the time he ends his tenure in 2023, saying that he has no power to do so.
This was in reaction to a remark by presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina, who had said that President will not hand over to “looters.”
In a statement issued in Abuja on Wednesday by Kola Ologbondiyan, its National Publicity Secretary, the main opposition party insisted that such remark was “a direct affront to Nigerians and a huge insult on their sensibility and sense of sovereignty to freely choose their leader.”
The party maintained that the Presidency’s continuous reference to a presidential successor, less than a year into President Buhari’s second tenure, was “a direct acceptance of failure and lack of capacity of the Buhari administration to manage the affairs of a nation as complex as Nigeria.”
The PDP, therefore, charged the Buhari Presidency to immediately withdraw the offensive and provocative remark to “hand Nigeria over”, in its response to Rev. Tunde Bakare’s comment on the 2023 Presidency.
It stated: “Our party cautions the Buhari Presidency to note that Nigeria is a sovereign nation governed by rules and that nobody, no matter how highly placed, has the power to hand her over to anybody.
“In insisting that President Buhari has an interest in his successor, the Buhari Presidency is indirect aggression against the will of the people to freely elect a president as guaranteed by the constitution.
“The 1999 constitution (as amended) does not confer the right to install the President of Nigeria on any individual, but on the people of Nigeria through a free, fair and credible election conducted without interference from anybody.”
The PDP, therefore, advised President Buhari to end his interest in the 2023 Presidency and use the remaining years of his tenure to get competent hands to assists him to manage the affairs of the nation, while he concentrated on his retirement plans, “as Nigerians expect no solutions from him and his party.”
The party further noted that President Buhari’s apprehensions that his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), will fizzle out before 2023 was also a weighty forewarning to Nigerians not to put any hope whatsoever in the APC.
The party urged Nigerians to note that such continued allusion to a successor by the Buhari Presidency showed that the President and the APC have no agenda for the nation for the next three years.
The statement added: “It further underscores the hopelessness of the administration and the sorry situation our nation is faced with under President Buhari and the APC.”
The PDP lamented that such underlined the pathetic drift in President Buhari’s New Year speech as well as his failure to articulate a clear-cut agenda in critical sectors.
It further said: “It also exposes the reason behind APC’s resort to blackmail, fabrication and attack on well-meaning Nigerians instead of enunciating a direction for its incompetent administration.
“Our party, standing with millions of Nigerians, counsels the Buhari Presidency to bury its confessed interests in the 2023 Presidency and desist from making unsolicited allusions and references to a successor, as failed leaders can only bequeath failure on a people.”
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