The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Thursday faulted remark by a national leader of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Bola Tinubu, asking Nigerians not to accept its recent apology.
Speaking during the colloquium in honour of his 66th birthday in Lagos, Tinubu cautioned Nigerians against accepting PDP’s apology.
In a swift reaction, PDP asked Tinubu to “stop playing god as Nigerians have the faculty and freedom to determine the leadership that best suit their desires without any body’s control.”
In a statement issued by its spokesperson, Kola Olagbondiyan, PDP advised Tinubu not to allow himself to be used a second time as he “still bears a gross part of the blame for the enthronement of this incompetent, divisive, nepotic and inherently corrupt administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, which has brought the nation to its knees in three years.”
Ologbondiyan stressed that Tinubu indirectly admitted the “failure of President Buhari and the APC administration.”
The party said without listening to the prompting of any politician, Nigerians across board had taken the liberty to accept PDP’s apology which was made “patriotically in the overall interest of national healing, reconciliation, unity and cohesion.”
The statement reads, “The PDP watched with amusement as Asiwaju Tinubu struggled with words to appease President Buhari and give him assurances that he can win a second term election in the face of mass failure both in governance and in their discredited, rejected and troubled platform.
“It was a direct admittance of failure and indictment on President Buhari’s administration, when Asiwaju pointedly told the President that the ship of the nation, under his (Buhari’s) watch, still needs to be rescued, almost three years down the line.
“It is tragic that Asiwaju had to tutor his visitor, who had no policy direction since his election in 2015, by engaging in a revision of the programmes and policies of the PDP, such as the leasing system, the mortgage and pension schemes which boosted the economy and directly impacted on the lives of Nigerians.
“More pathetic is the fact that the APC leader presented the PDP programmes as if he was introducing novel ideas in the economy. This clearly stood with our position that the APC government is incompetent and lacking in ideas of how to move the nation forward.
“While we congratulate the Lagos Governor Emeritus on his birthday, the PDP considers it needful, to forewarn him to study the current ambience of Nigerian politics as it relates to the failures of the Buhari Presidency and the fact that the citizens have since rejected this Presidency and the APC, so that Asiwaju will not find himself swimming against the tide.”