Former Vice President and presidential aspirant on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has faulted the claim by the Presidency that President Muhammadu Buhari was not power drunk and uncompromising in the bid to ensure probity and accountability.
Buhari’s media aide, Femi Adesina, had made the statement in defence of his boss who was accused by Atiku.
Atiku had said Buhari was “very uncompromising, power drunk (and) will not be ready to leave power without a fight.”
It was in response to the claim that Adesina said Buhari was uncompromising in ensuring probity and accountability.
But in a swift response to the defence, Atiku’s media aide, Paul Ibe, faulted Adesina saying that Buhari could not be said to be uncompromising in the bid to ensure accountability, having done nothing over the alleged certificate forgery by the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun.
In a statement he issued on Thursday, Ibe also wondered why the president did not do anything when the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, secured a court order to stop the Senate from probing the reinstatement of Abdulrasheed Maina who is accused of a pension scam involving billions of naira.
His words: “If President Buhari is ‘uncompromising in cleaning the rot Nigeria was consigned into pre -2015’ then how come the latest Corruption Perception Index by Transparency International reveals that Nigeria is more corrupt today than she was in 2015, having moved 12 steps backwards in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, moving from 136 in 2014 under the PDP to 148 today?”
He added: “Again, we ask how uncompromising a president can be when he allows a minister accused of forgery to remain at her job?
“It appears that the president is surrounded by people who have become his echo chamber and are telling him what he wants to hear, otherwise no one in his right mind would call an administration that increased the price of petrol while at the same time paying more subsidy on the product than the previous government which it accused of ‘subsidy scam’, uncompromising against corruption.
“It is only common sense that if the price of petrol increased by 68% from ₦87 per litre to ₦145, then the cost of fuel subsidy should also reduce, especially as the price of crude oil also reduced.
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“However, by some strange mathematics, the Buhari administration pays a whopping ₦1.4 trillion on subsidy per annum according to the minister of state for petroleum. This amount is almost twice what the Jonathan administration paid and yet President Buhari accused that administration of scamming the nation.
“Where is the transparency in that? No wonder the minister of state for petroleum resources revealed in a leaked memo that $25 billion worth of contracts were awarded by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation under the watch of the supervising minister of petroleum, President Muhammadu Buhari.
“More than a year after the probe panel which probed the fantastically corrupt Ikoyi apartment billions affair, nobody knows who owned the money and how $43 million in cash was housed in a government linked flat. So much for an uncompromising attitude to corruption.”
Ibe said going by Buhari’s statement that the rule of law could be violated, it had become evident that Buhari was power drunk as well as dictatorial.
“By that statement made by President Buhari at the opening ceremony of the 58th Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association, Nigerians now understand why this administration continues to flout court orders. This is what happens when a president thinks he is above the law.
“We advise the presidency to familiarise itself with the constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria 1999 as amended, in order to understand that the Rule of Law and the fundamental human rights of all Nigerian citizens are guaranteed by that document which the President swore to uphold on May 29, 2015.”
