Tinubu never attacked Buhari at Calabar rally — APC
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Bola Tinubu
Those who claimed the remarks by the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Mr Bola Tinubu during Tuesday’s rally in Calabar, the Cross River State capital, were targeted at the presidency got it wrong, the party’s Presidential Campaign Council (APC PCC) has said.
The APC PCC, in a statement in Abuja yesterday by its Director, Media and Publicity, Bayo Onanuga, distanced Tinubu from casting aspersions on the character of President Muhammadu Buhari at the U.J Esuene Stadium venue of the presidential rally.
The campaign council noted that Tinubu’s reference to exchange rate was not in any way an attack on the Buhari-led administration but an attempt to capture how the economic mismanagement of the PDP created forex crisis since 2015.
The statement reads, “We find it important to correct the misrepresentation of the statement of our candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the campaign rally in Calabar yesterday by a section of the media especially Thisday Newspaper and its broadcast arm, Arise News.
“Anyone who followed the entire sequence and context of what Asiwaju said at the rally in Calabar will know he directed his missiles against PDP and Atiku. Let’s we forget, the PDP left the forex reserve at $28 billion by May 2015, when Buhari took over despite unprecedented revenue from crude oil.
“Even with the massive oil theft and low price of crude, until recently, President Buhari had built up the reserve to about $38 billion. The PDP in 1999 met the exchange rate at N85 to one US dollar in 1999 and left it at N230 in 2015.
“The futile attempt to misrepresent Asiwaju Tinubu by the mischievous PDP media did not detract from his central message. Our candidate explicitly said the people should not follow PDP and Atiku because they don’t know the road.
“Asiwaju Tinubu could not have meant President Buhari does not know road, having celebrated, numerous times, the achievements of the Buhari administration. Tinubu had also said at campaign fora he would build on the achievements, when elected on 25 February.”
“It is simply illogical that the same Asiwaju would attack the Buhari administration of not knowing the road. In contrast, throughout this campaign up till now, Asiwaju Tinubu has consistently said PDP and all the opposition parties put together do not know the road to prosperity for Nigeria. He also said the competing candidates do not have the track record he amassed as governor of Lagos.
“As the frontrunner in the race, he has promised to implement his robust Action Plan that will bring socio-economic prosperity to our country. We are not unmindful of the antics of Thisday Newspaper and Arise News to deliberately misrepresent our candidate and accentuate anything they think will project Asiwaju Tinubu in a bad light since the beginning of this electioneering circle.
“We want to state categorically that all the machinations of the opposition elements to put a wedge between President Muhammadu Buhari and Asiwaju Tinubu will fail. APC, its leadership and President Buhari are strongly united behind our presidential candidate.”
“All the sponsored innuendos, invented and imaginary discord in APC which the failed PDP and their media organs hope to cash on to win the coming election will blow up in their faces.”
