Director General, Presidential Campaign Council of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr. Rotimi Amaechi has said that President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration would not give Nigerians excuses again for failing to deliver on its promises during its second tenure.
At a post-election press briefing in Abuja, yesterday, Amaechi, who is also the Minister of Transportation, expressed appreciation to Nigerians for giving Buhari and the ruling party a second term mandate at February 23 presidential poll.
According to him, APC would endeavour to avoid playing the blame game and would take responsibility to improve the lots of Nigerians.
In a veiled reference to the move by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to challenge the victory of the APC in court, Amaechi appealed to the main opposition party not to go to court but to join hands with the Buhari administration to work for Nigeria in the next four years.
His words: “The focus of this conference was to thank Nigerians and say we are grateful to PDP; you should not pursue this matter in court. Let us prepare for the next four years, when we come back for another election and encourage INEC to conduct a free and fair election.
“Whether the PDP did well or not, we now have another four years to prove them wrong by doing better. We cannot keep crying that they didn’t do well. No excuses because the President has promised to run a government that will satisfy Nigerians.
“The President has said that not only will he run an all-inclusive government, but he is guided by the fact that Nigerians have suffered a lot. Election is over and we are no longer discussing corruption, but wants to implement the policies that will ensure that monies that belong to Nigerians are kept for Nigerians alone.
“We want to say to Nigerians that we are grateful and we are humbled by the number of people who turned out, not just for the election, but at the point of campaign, not only in the North, but also in the South. The support in the South increased tremendously against what we had in 2015 which is a clear indication of the acceptability of the President.
“In celebrating, we are conscious of the fact that in this election, we want to repeat what Gowon said in the 70s that is, no victor and no vanquish. We enjoin our colleagues in PDP to join hands and ensure that Nigerians have good governance.”
Amaechi said that rather than bickering over the result of the election, Nigerians should be concerned about the violence that accompanied it and pray for the souls of those who lost their lives in the course of the campaign and during elections.
“Because of campaign, we lost 10 persons in Taraba, four in Borno and 15 in Port Harcourt. The one in Port Harcourt was unnecessary because the event was over and people were leaving when bad boys came to foment trouble and people panic and we had stampede.”
In the last four years, the minister said the APC had been accused of always blaming the PDP for the challenges in the economy, adding that the position of the ruling party was justified given the poor state of the economy when it took over the reins of power.
Amaechi said: “In the accounts of Excess Crude, there was $68 billion left by Obasanjo and the cost of the railway project from Lagos to Ibadan to Kano was $7.8 billion. If that money was well-utilised, we should have had one now. Lagos to Calabar is $11 billion, we could have had the rail from Lagos to Calabar.
“But nobody is asking where the money Obasano left behind was? By the time we came, they had taken away that money and you said we should not blame the PDP. We cannot stop blaming the PDP because that is history which is a record of the past events and the present. What happened in the past influences our present. They took away the money leaving behind only $2.5 billion. So, how do you operate?
On the reports that the President got more votes in 2015 than what he got this year, Amaechi said: “There was voter aparthy because Buhari supporters had the feeling that he had already won and did not come out to vote.”He recalled that during the campaigns there was huge turnout of supporters in Borno and some people were hanging on trees.
“We are satisfied with the votes we got. You can say that this election was a scorecard for the President on whether Nigerians are satisfied with what he has done. 15.1 million Nigerians said they were satisfied with his performance.
“We are very proud of that and we are humbled in victory. Even the President is quite happy about it and even told Nigerians that they should go ahead to vote for whoever they wanted. We believe that our brothers in the other party will see reasons. But we will try and see what will happen,” he said.
Reacting to the violence that occurred in Rivers State during the last election, Amaechi expressed regret at the loss of lives and blamed it on the militancy and political thuggery in the state.
“Majority of the people dying are APC members. As a leader of the APC, will I go and kill my own people? They did not only kill those people, they cut off their neck and went away with their corpses,” he said.
