LETTER WRITING: Expectedly, PDP backs Obasanjo, attacks Buhari

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has asked President Muhammadu Buhari to stop “acting like a coward” by hauling insults on ‘respected’ leaders and elder statesmen, including former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

The party condemned the choice of words Buhari’s spokesman used to reply Obasanjo for cautioning against Buhari’s alleged desperation for self-succession.

“In approving his media aide, Mallam Garba Shehu, to cast aspersions and insult on a former President, President Buhari is setting a very bad example to younger Nigerians by fouling our national values and heritage of esteeming our elders and leaders; a seed, which may also haunt him in the future.”

Shehu had in response to Obasanjo’s recent attack on Buhari and his government described Obasanjo as a ‘coward ‘, ‘liar’ and a sick person, asking him to get well soon.

But PDP spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, in a statement Monday night condemned Buhari for approving his aide to use such words against an elder statesmen.

“Nigerians were appalled that President Buhari, whose state of health has been accommodated by the nation, would turn around to make baseless and unsubstantiated negative assertions on the health of another leader.

“President Buhari may have seen how Nigerians have been registering their disappointment on his resort to personal attacks on former President Obasanjo, instead responding to the germane issues raised by the former President.

“Nigerians have weighed all the concerns by former President Obasanjo, particularly the manifest desperation by the Buhari Presidency to undermine our democratic institutions, including the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the judiciary and the legislature as well as plots to use security forces to subvert the will of the people at the polls.

READ ALSO : PRESIDENCY TO OBASANJO: ‘Coward..liar..get well soon’

“Instead of attacking former President Obasanjo, President Buhari should have been sobered and retrace his steps in the interest of the corporate existence of our country which he is pushing to the precipice,” the statement read.

The party then called on Buhari to note that his resort to personal attacks on the critics of his administration cannot “distract Nigerians from their resolve to rescue our nation from the stranglehold of his administration by voting him out of office, come February 16, 2019.”

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