The presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has fired back at the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, urging them to stop getting high on their own smoke.
He said no political blackmail and ploy to create bad blood between him and President Muhammadu Buhari will succeed.
Tinubu, who spoke through the APC presidential campaign council, accused Atiku and PDP of trying to twist his remarks in Abeokuta on the fuel scarcity and the newly redesigned Naira notes.
He said the opposition party attempted to create a wedge between him and Buhari by distorting his statement in Abeokuta that there were plans to scuttle the general elections through fuel crisis and naira redesign policy.
Tinubu had at the APC presidential campaign rally in Abeokuta, Ogun State on Wednesday, said “the traitors” have plotted to sabotage the elections, using the fuel scarcity and the naira redesign.
But, in a statement issued on Thursday by director, Media and Publicity, of the APC presidential campaign council, Bayo Onanuga, the former Lagos governor aid Nigerians should no longer be in doubt about those working in cahoots with fifth columnists to inflict avoidable pains on them for a sinister political end.
Onanuga stated: “No sooner Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu empathised with the Nigerian people facing the dual crises of fuel and new Naira notes scarcity, than the opposition PDP and the Atiku camp issued a knee-jerk response, derailing from the issues, distorting Asiwaju’s statement and trying, in vain, to create a wedge between our presidential candidate and President Muhammadu Buhari.
“When the guilty are afraid of being uncovered, they try to push back with red-herring. For the records, Asiwaju Tinubu during APC campaign rally at Abeokuta on Wednesday, in his statement, did not mention, blame or accuse President Muhammadu Buhari for the current challenges in the country.
“Asiwaju Tinubu was only adverting government’s attention to the sabotage being carried out by some Fifth Columnists in the system, possibly working in cahoots with the PDP.”
Onanuga stated that the CBN officials, including Governor Godwin Emefiele have said many times that enough new Naira notes have been supplied to the banks, yet our people complain that they have not been able to get the new notes.
He explained that Tinubu only re-echoed what is well known and acknowledged, even by President Buhari himself at different fora that there are Fifth Columnists in and outside of government who often throw spanners in the works against good intentions and programmes of the government.
He noted: “How does an advisory genuinely made by Asiwaju Tinubu to protect and create goodwill for the government of his party become an attack? It can only be so in the jaundiced view of the PDP.
“It is in this light we found amusing the directionless Atiku Campaign’s bagful of mischief in their hurriedly put together press statement meant to gain shameful mileage from the suffering of Nigerians.
“PDP and Atiku should remember not to get high on their own smoke. No political blackmail and an attempt to create a conflict between Tinubu and his long-term ally, President Muhammadu Buhari can succeed. We have bad news for Atiku and his handlers: their latest mischief is therefore doomed to fail.”
