Those supporting Buhari in S’West doing so for selfish interests –PDP

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Ekiti State has alleged that President Muhammadu Buhari hates Southwest region and that those from the area supporting him were “only doing so for selfish interests.

“Looking back at the damage done to the region between 1984 and 1985 that Buhari was Military Head of State and its total abandonment since 2015, genuine Yoruba person will never want him (Buhari) to continue in office beyond this year,” director of media and publicity of the Atiku/Obi PDP Presidential Campaign Council in Ekiti State, Lere Olayinka, said in a statement on Sunday.

The party, which described restructuring as the only path to the progress of Nigeria, hailed its Presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar for promising to begin the process of restructuring the country within six months of assumption of office if elected.

At the All Progressives Congress (APC) South West Women and Youth Presidential campaign rally in Ibadan on Saturday, wife of Ekiti State governor, Bisi Fayemi, who spoke on behalf of wives of governors of the South West, was quoted saying that the South West would not leave the “path of progress and development outlined by Buhari for the bush.”

But in its statement, Ekiti PDP challenged those still supporting the President in the South West to mention what he did for the region since 2015, adding that “even those youths who voted for Buhari in 2015 because they never witnessed him as a military ruler can now judge him with his woeful performance as a civilian president.”

Olayinka then recalled that in 1984, Buhari allegedly took the South West off the path of progress and development outlined by the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo led Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) by cancelling total free education and free health programs being enjoyed in the region as well as the Lagos Metroline project and other developmental projects.

“He (Buhari) even made moves to merge Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife with University of Ibadan before he was ousted in 1985.

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“It is also on record that Buhari abandoned the Southwest when he was chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) under late General Sani Abacha and has done nothing for the region since 2015,” Olayinka added.

He then urged people of the South West, especially the youths to Google the Lagos Metroline network conceived in 1980 by Alhaji Lateef Jakande, adding that; “The Metroline project was scrapped in 1985 by Buhari at a loss of over $78 million to the Lagos tax payers.

“If Buhari had not cancelled that project out of hatred for the Yoruba people, transportation in Lagos would have been better than it is now and for 20 years (1999 – 2019) that Lagos State has been ruled by the APC under different names, nothing has been done to revive the project,” he said.

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