APC will never stop blaming Jonathan —Osinbajo, Tinubu

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and a national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Bola Tinubu, on Thursday said that the ruling party will never stop blaming former President Goodluck Jonathan administration.

Nigerians have continued to frown at the ruling APC for always blaming the previous administration for its perceived failures since President Muhammadu Buhari assumed power three years ago on the mantra of change.

But speaking at the 10th Bola Tinubu Colloquium in Lagos, where his 66th birthday was commemorated, Tinubu argued that if the opposition stops talking about the corruption in the immediate past government “what is the lesson to Nigerians.”

He said, “They say don’t talk about it. What should we talk about? If we are not talking about it, then what is the lesson to Nigerians?

“For 16 years they looted the country and they say we shouldn’t talk about it, as if we should just go ahead and run our government”.

The former Lagos State governor also at the event called on Nigerians not to accept the apology of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

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According to him, the apology by the opposition party was like the case of a thief who is only begging because he was caught in the act.

“Don’t take their apologies; they lied, they falsified, they changed figures, they made fake promises and they say we shouldn’t talk about them”, he said.

On why APC will never stop blaming the PDP, Osinbajo said in his speech that though corruption is an existential problem for Nigeria, but that “the corruption of the previous five years destroyed the economy.”

In a swift reaction however, the opposition PDP awhile cautioned Tinubu to stop playing god as Nigerians have the faculty and freedom to determine the leadership that best suits their desires without anybody’s control.

The party also advised Tinubu not to allow himself to be used a second time “as he still bears a gross part of the blame for the enthronement of this incompetent, divisive, nepotic and inherently corrupt administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, which has brought the nation to its knees in three years”.

PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, in a statement on Thursday, said Tinubu’s speech, at his colloquium, rather than being a damage of the PDP, ended up amplifying an admittance of the failure of President Buhari and the APC administration.

The party said without listening to the prompting of any politician, Nigerians across board have taken the liberty to accept PDP’s apology which was made patriotically in the overall interest of national healing, reconciliation, unity and cohesion.

He said, the PDP watched with amusement as Asiwaju Tinubu struggled with words to appease President Buhari and give him assurances that he can win a second term election in the face of mass failure both in governance and in their discredited, rejected and troubled platform.

“It was a direct admittance of failure and indictment on President Buhari’s administration, when Asiwaju pointedly told the President that the ship of the nation, under his (Buhari’s) watch, still needs to be rescued, almost three years down the line.

“It is tragic that Asiwaju had to tutor his visitor, who had no policy direction since his election in 2015, by engaging in a revision of the programmes and policies of the PDP, such as the leasing system, the mortgage and pension schemes which boosted the economy and directly impacted on the lives of Nigerians.

“More pathetic is the fact that the APC leader presented the PDP programmes as if he was introducing novel ideas in the economy. This clearly stood with our position that the APC government is incompetent and lacking in ideas of how to move the nation forward”, the party stated.

 

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