Tinubu Didn’t Ridicule Buhari In Calabar – APC Campaign Council

The All Progressives Congress Campaign Council (APC PCC) has denied media reports that its flagbearer, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, ridiculed President Muhammadu Buhari over the exchange rate.

Naija News reported that Tinubu, during his speech at the APC presidential rally in Calabar, the Cross River State capital, said when the Buhari government took over, the naira/dollar exchange rate was about N200 to a dollar, but it has depreciated to about N800 to the dollar on the parallel market.

But in a statement on Wednesday, the PCC Director of Media and Publicity, Bayo Onanuga, said Tinubu’s reference to exchange rate was not in any way an attack on the Muhammadu Buhari-led  government but an attempt to capture how the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) mismanaged the economy and forex crisis in the country since 2015.

Onanuga said Tinubu was not referring to Buhari and didn’t malign the president whatsoever, adding that the attempt by the opposition party to cause rift between the two leaders will fail. He added that the APC, its leadership and President Buhari are strongly united behind Tinubu.

He stated that Tinubu only advised the people not to vote for the PDP and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, because of their litany of failures while in power for 16 years.

The statement partly read, “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 the PDP and Atiku. Lest 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 the 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 the 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 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. The 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.”