PDP dubs Buhari’s FEC cancerous, chaotic, says it should be disbanded

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Tuesday said that the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Executive Council (FEC) has become cancerous, disorganized, chaotic, and incapable of driving an organized, result-oriented system.

The opposition party, therefore, demanded that the FEC should be disbanded.

The party was responding to the perceived hostilities among officials in the Buhari Presidency, including Presidential aides, ministers and heads of agencies.

One of such hostilities was the recent war of words that ensued between two top government officials in Nigeria, Abike Dabiri-Erewa and Isa Pantami over the purported ejection of staff of Nigeria Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) from an office complex in Abuja.

Dabiri-Erewa, who is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of NIDDCOM, had last week accused, Pantami, the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, of using armed security personnel to chase the NIDCOM staff away from the office complex offered to them by the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC).

In a statement on Tuesday by its national spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, the PDP said the development had further exposed “a scandalous breakdown of the administration’s central command system.”

The statement read:

“Our party asserts that this situation is a mark of failure by the Buhari Presidency and the All Progressives Congress (APC) to provide organized leadership for our nation.

“A situation where officials are constantly at daggers drawn among themselves in unending clashes, backbiting, betrayals, leakage of sensitive documents and internal bickering over pecuniary and political interests, in manners not different from street skirmishes of common cult groups, is unacceptable to our nation.

“It is indeed shocking that the acrimony had sunk to a situation where the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, reportedly evicted the staff of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) from their allocated office, with guns, while the Chairman of the Commission, Hon. Abike Dabiri, was on official assignment with the President.

“Currently, the newly appointed Chief of Staff to the President, Prof. Ibrahim Gambari and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, are said to be at each other’s throat, with the SGF reportedly querying the decision of the President to sack the former Director of the Transmission Company of Nigeria, Mr. Usman Mohammed. The situation had degenerated into serious confusion in the federal executive.

“Nigerians can recall the bitter wrangling, wherein the National Security Adviser (NSA), Maj. Gen Babagana Monguno, earlier this year, alerted that Presidential responsibilities, including presiding over sensitive security matters, have been hijacked by late Chief of Staff, Mallam Abba Kyari, thereby frustrating the fight against insurgency and acts of violence ravaging our country.

“Furthermore, the power sector is still under the stress of squabbling between the SGF and the Minister of Power, Sale Mamman, with the SGF, reinstating some officials who were sacked by the minister in December last year.

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“The nation has also not forgotten the embarrassing public fight between the First Lady, Aisha Buhari and President Muhammadu Buhari’s cousins, over rooms in the Presidential villa, which further exposed the chaotic situation in the President Buhari-led administration.

“Before then, the First Lady had alerted the nation that a cabal had hijacked the federal executive and taken over governance of our nation.

“It is sad that presidential hostilities had resulted in escalated cases of internal sabotage including the leakage of sensitive documents as exposed by the Head of Service, Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan and recently witnessed in the embarrassing leakage of President Buhari’s draft COVID-19 speech.”

The party said that Nigeria could now see how vulnerable the nation had become and why it would be extremely difficult for the country to witness any progress under the Buhari Presidency.

“Indeed, no nation can achieve meaningful development under a rancorous and shambolic federal executive council as currently constituted, with the height of irredeemable division among them,” the party added.

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