The All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council, has berated Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) for accusing Bola Tinubu, its candidate of plagiarism.
The campaign council of the former vice president had alleged that Tinubu’s manifesto was a copy and paste version of MKO Abiola’s 1993 manifesto.
Hitting back, the APC said the PDP’s 74-page campaign document is nothing but an itemization of ongoing projects of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.
Minister of State for Labour and Employment and chief spokesperson of the APC-PCC, Mr Festus Keyamo, SAN, said in a statement that it appeared the PDP was unaware that Nigerians had since dismissed it as an unserious and broken opposition party.
“If nothing at all, it’s latest press release signed by Chief Dele Momodu attests to its crass unseriousness,” he stated.
While noting that the 5-point agenda of the flagbearer of the PDP was nothing to write home about, Keyamo stated:. “Top on the list is his lip service to unify Nigeria. We can only laugh. This is a man that his party is torn between division and disarray. Till now, he is yet to fix it. What a failure!
“His 74-page campaign document has in it ongoing milestones of the President Muhammadu Buhari led administration. From lifting millions out of poverty to power generation to economy revitalization, it is clear that they are either too lazy to think or bereft of fresh ideas.
“Everywhere Atiku went to, he was never caught speaking to issues of governance. Rather, if he is not promising the Igbo Presidency in 2027, he is playing the ethnic card (like in Kaduna). Nigerians are wise, they know he has nothing to offer.”
He added that PDP’s attempt to pooh-pooh Tinubu’s action plan only ended as nothing but a joke.
He said APC’s expectation was that it’s action plan would inspire other political parties, especially the intellectually bankrupt PDP, to engage it constructively on the initiatives and programmes it intended to implement.
“True to type, PDP has again reacted, in our view, without even reading the content on the document. All they are interested in is the title of our message, not the quality of our ideas. We are extremely amused, but not entirely shocked. This only demonstrates once again their incurable incapacity to act as a credible opposition to the ruling party.
“Dele Momodu should have rather stayed in his accustomed lane of praise-singing socialites and the likes instead of dabbling in the more demanding job of critiquing policy statements. It is clearly not his forte!
”The quality of his recent write-up is a testament that his team is not made up of experts in governance and policy formulation. He must have gathered his team of photographers and video editors to read through a document that is far beyond their tabloid-centred minds.
“One would have expected Dele Momodu to make clear comparative analyses between Hope ‘93 campaign document of MKO Abiola and the Renewed Hope document of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He goofed miserably. He was just huffing and puffing without substance. A write-up that was intended to be a critique of a document on its supposed lack of details ended up itself as an empty shell.”
Tinubu began the “systematic and robust increase of Lagos’ Internally Generated Revenue, making the state one of the richest self-sustaining governments in Africa”, and how “he single-handledly (sic) revived and revamped Local Governments in Lagos and brought developments to practically every part of the state.”
“Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu is known for “his glittering records and achievements in both private and public sectors”.
“Can Dele Momodu also say this about his principal, Atiku Abubakar, whose time as Vice President has no other legacy to be remembered for other than the failed privatization exercise he was assigned to supervise where he sold national assets to his friends and cronies for peanuts? Should we remind you, Dele Momodu, of the distasteful remarks made by former President Olusegun Obasanjo on your party’s flag-bearer as Vice President?
“Of course, track records should be critical in evaluating any party or candidate. If we may ask Dele Momodu, what are your party’s track records? When the country had substantial receipts from crude oil export, your party squandered it all. PDP represent what the Yoruba proverbially call ‘Arungun’ (squanderer).
”They promised the people of South-East Second Niger Bridge for 16 years, yet, nothing was built. Today, thanks to President Muhammadu Buhari of APC, the Second Niger Bridge is completed. At a time, a former spokesperson of your government said Nigeria couldn’t afford train coaches, much less rail lines.
”Today, we have Lagos – Ibadan, Itakpe – Warri rail lines. Even in the face of dwindling resources and global economic challenges, we have lifted millions of Nigerians out of poverty with our National Social Investment Programs, widely acclaimed as the first in Africa in scale and innovation.
”Nigeria has become a sufficient rice-growing nation, rated highest in rice and sorghum production in Africa by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), a status PDP thought was impossible,” Keyamo added.
The APC campaign spokesman noted that Dele Momodu and his party failed woefully to point out a single example of the copy-and-paste he referred to in the press statement released by him.
He said: “It was expected that he would have cited one example of an original document from which we copied and the portion in particular. In all, his press release is just a juvenile prose, bereft of details and substance, full of highfalutin nonsense and signifying nothing.”