PDP raises concerns over ECOWAS appointment of Buhari as Covid-19 Response Champion

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has expressed concerns over the reported appointment of President Muhammadu Buhari as the ECOWAS Covid-19 Response Champion.

The party said it was raising concern over the appointment given Buhari’s supposed failure to personally lead from the front in the fight against the spread of the pandemic in Nigeria.

ECOWAS leaders had during a teleconference meeting on Thursday made Buhari the Response Champion on the fight against Covid-19 in West Africa.

But in a statement on Friday by its national spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, the PDP wondered why the body would give such appointment to Buhari, who allegedly remained missing in the fight against the virus in his own country.

Nevertheless, the PDP advised Buhari to see this appointment as a serious wake up call to make himself “more visible and personally involved in the front in this fight against the pandemic in our country, on which pedestal he can champion a response in the sub-region.”

The party noted that the decision of the ECOWAS leaders was predicated on the past leadership roles played by Nigeria in the sub-region and urged Buhari to wake up to the challenge and ensure that the laidback approach of his administration does not whittle the confidence other nations repose in Nigeria.

The PDP agreed no less with submission by some Nigerians that the ECOWAS leaders might not be aware that President Buhari had held only two national broadcasts since the outbreak of the pandemic in Nigeria, without a clear-cut national strategy, beyond the routine, to combat the scourge in the country.

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“The ECOWAS leaders may not have been properly furnished with the disheartening situation in Nigeria where a prevailing corrupt system had failed to provide panaceas to majority of vulnerable and poor citizens whose means of livelihood had been crippled by the lockdown. This is in addition to alleged diversion of palliative funds and materials by dishonest officials,” the opposition party said.

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