APC To Sanction Tinubu For Insulting Buhari In Abeokuta – Adamu Vows

Agency ReporterJune 4, 2022

4 minutes read

The National Chairman of the Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Abdullahi Adamu, says the party will sanction the former Lagos state governor, Bola Tinubu, for his utterances against President Muhammadu Buhari.

The chairman said the party was not happy with the statement credited a presidential aspirant on Buhari in Abeokuta, Ogun State.

Tinubu had on Thursday while meeting with delegates of the APC in Abeokuta said Buhari would not have emerged the country’s president in 2015 without his support.

He added that the president had given hope in the presidency after suffering successive defeats in 2003, 2007 and 2011.

“You have not heard this from me before. This is the first place I am saying this,” Tinubu who addressed the delegates in Yoruba said.

“If not for me that led the war front, Buhari won’t have emerged. He contested first, second and third times, but lost. He even said on television that he won’t contest again.

“But I went to his home in Katsina, I told him you would contest and win, but you won’t joke with the matters of the Yoruba.

“Since he has emerged I have not been appointed minister. I didn’t get nor request a contract. This time, it’s Yoruba’s turn and in Yorubaland, it’s my turn.

“The second time, he picked another Igbo, (Edwin) Ume-Ezeoke, Nigerians didn’t vote for him. And he said that even if he went to bring the Pope to run as his deputy, Nigerians won’t vote for him, but he said, ‘You, Bola Tinubu, you have six governors, you have never lost an election before, come and be my deputy.”

“He knew all the calculations then favoured us, that is why he wanted me as his deputy, but I told him to let us build the party first. And when we finished building the party after we brought in people from the PDP, (Bukola) Saraki now saw that those from the PDP would not get anything if Buhari, a Muslim, became the president and I, also a Muslim, became his deputy. He won’t get the Senate president because the Senate president cannot also be a Muslim; that was how they started the campaign of calumny against me.

“And I told them that I have a candidate that is a Christian that I could nominate so that the party would not break. That was how I nominated Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. I surrendered my right to him (Osinbajo).

“I was asked to submit three names, Yemi Cardozo, Wale Edun, and Yemi Osinbajo, but I told them if I submit three names, they would play a game, they might make it four and pick the fourth one. I gave them one name and that was Osinbajo.”

The APC chieftain had since backtracked on the statement, saying it was not meant to belittle the president.

Adamu, who addressed journalists at the APC National Secretariat in Abuja, said the party will be punished by Tinubu for his utterances against President.

Adamu stated that the former Lagos governor’s outburst was unbecoming of a leader of his stature, adding that the party found his latest attack on the president insulting.

The APC national chairman said, “We are saddened by what we saw in the video and pray we don’t see such again. I, as Chairman of this party, have a duty to stand by Mr President.

“Tinubu went as far as saying how Muhammadu Buhari went to him, citing instances of even prostrating in tears begging him to endorse him and to support him for the presidency. He claimed Buhari went to him.

“His utterances are very very insulting. It’s very very unbecoming for a person of that standing to do what he did to the sitting president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the President produced by the votes of the APC.

“Though the president says he belongs to everybody. It is amazing how a fellow APC person would make that kind of comment in that kind of circumstances about the president. We take exception to this. It has shown that he does not show any appreciable level of respect for the office of Mr President.

“Therefore we want to make it public that we are saddened by what we saw in the video, in that reportàge and we condemn it in the strongest of terms. We do hope that he would never say that kind of again, particularly of the APC extraction to make such kinds of comments.”

Asked if the APC would punish the national leader, Adamu said a decision had not been taken.

“If there is a need to punish any member of a party, not just Tinubu, we will bring it to the party’s book. But we are watching,” he said.

The party chairman also confirmed that President Buhari would meet all the APC presidential aspirants on Saturday night in Abuja.

He also revealed that the party had appealed the judgment in favour of statutory delegates.

Justice A.M. Liman of the Federal High Court, Kano, had on Friday, given the APC statutory delegates the go-ahead to take part in the party’s presidential primary slated for Monday in Abuja.

The judge, who gave the verdict while ruling in a suit filed by the trio of Senator Mas’ud El-Jibrin Doguwa, Hon. Habibu Sani, and Hon. Bilyaminu Yusuf Shin’Kafi, said statutory delegates are constitutionally qualified to attend all meetings, congresses, and conventions of any registered political party in the country.