Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, has declared that the battle-line between the governing All Progressives Congress, APC, and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP has been drawn.
Shehu made this known in his article titled, “#Buharigate as the limit of obstructionist politics” on Saturday.
Last week, President Buhari trended on Twitter as Nigerians reacted to allegations that he benefitted from the $2.1 billion arms deal fund in the Office of the former National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd), who himself had trended under the hashtag, “#Dasukigate”.
Mr. Shehu pointed out that while leaders from both PDP and APC have voiced out their support for the clean-up of the country by ridding it of corruption, the National Working Committee of the opposition PDP seems clearly to be working contrary to the anti-corruption rhetoric of their Board of Trustees.
“Their public communication organs have, in particular, become increasingly combative against the exercise. All that the President, leading the APC change orchestra is trying to do is to revamp a moribund nation with growth, jobs and recover looted funds”.
He, however, noted with sadness that only a few, if any, members of the PDP national secretariat are treating the war against corruption as the extra-ordinary event which it is.
According to him, when they speak up, they do so most ardently against the anti-corruption drive of the Buhari administration.
“In a clear demonstration of abstructist politics, they challenge the government in every move it makes, but fail to spell out alternative roadmaps to curbing the monstrous corruption that threatens to consume the country; they rush to condemn and dramatize even the smallest of measures which, given time and patience will manifest through positive outcomes”, Shehu wrote.
The hashtag “#Buharigate”, he claimed, was intended as a counter-response to “Dasukigate”, which he described as “the phenomenal corruption scheme by which money intended for weapons to fight terror was shared among PDP leaders”.
He further stated that it was a fake intervention and a malicious propaganda against the president, obviously intended to detract from his enormously huge reputational capital, the basis on which the APC nation-wide victory was founded.
“The #Buharigate failed to gain traction because it was seen as an opposition overreach and a desperate attempt to tarnish his hard-earned name and nothing more. No serious blogger therefore paid a serious attention to it.
“This baseless allegation that the President had benefitted from the diversion of money intended to fight insurgency under the former National Security Adviser equally underlines the cruel nature of today’s politics, that even the best personal examples cannot keep a leader from the tar brush of the opponent.
“Apart from seeking to mellow the President, I suspect that the opposition had thought these attacks would revive the collapsed fortunes of the PDP while at the same time projecting their leaders as victims of persecution in the hands of the APC administration”, Shehu said.
The presidential spokesman, however, rejoiced that Nigerians have thrown their full weight behind the war on corruption, a development he attributed to the constructive nature of the government’s engagement against the menace and the determination with which it is being fought.
“Adding impetus and flavor is the frustration at the rationalization of corruption by the last administration and their inadequate and impotent efforts to curb and punish high-profile offenders”, he stressed.
Shehu pointed out that President Buhari was and is far, far away from, and remains untouched by the “Dasukigate”, adding that plans to link the president to the $2.1 billion arms deal scandal failed because it was borne out of desperation to gain sympathy by an opposition he claimed cannot heal itself unless it comes to terms with the danger of corruption it thrived in, the party’s internal structures are overhauled and remade to meet the minimum requirements of a democratic organization.
The presidential aide, therefore, labeled the “#Buharigate” a fraud and “an unbecoming spectacle designed to tarnish the illustrious record of the President so as to mellow his anti-corruption drive”.
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