By Nuel Suji, Abuja.
The All Progressives Congress (APC) has dismissed claims by the Jonathan Campaign Organization that its chieftain, Mr. Bola Tinubu plans to become Vice President through the back door, describing it as sickening and outlandish.
The opposition party said it was a campaign designed to divert attention from the success of the party’s Presidential candidate, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, at the Chatham House in London, Thursday.
Spokesman of the PDP Presidential Campaign Organisation, Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode had on Friday accused the APC of planning to foist on Nigeria “an evil, ungodly, wicked and ruthless agenda” in the event the party wins the March 28 presidential election.
Fani-Kayode said “Tinubu, according to our information, has compelled Professor Osinbajo to swear to an oath that after six months in office, he would resign as the vice president, in the unlikely event that their party wins.
“The wicked plot, as laid out by them, is to force Professor Osinbajo to resign for Senator Tinubu to be nominated by General Buhari as his replacement,”
But in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Lai Mohammed, London at the weekend, the party said “ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Jonathan Administration still did not have any answer to what has now become an epochal moment that has separated the wheat from the chaff.
“Our presidential candidate’s globally-acclaimed outing has presented Nigerians, and indeed the global community, with a choice between a bumbling, ineffective, incoherent, clueless, visionless and incompetent President and an assertive, knowledgeable, dignified, purposeful and principled President-in-waiting,” it stated.
Adding that: “Having failed to discredit that outing with a rented crowd, some of whom confessed to have been paid to carry placards they do not even understand, the PDP and the Jonathan Administration have now resorted to making nauseating claims that are totally untrue, absolutely incomprehensible and nothing but sheer bunkum, the party attacked.
It said the claim was the latest in a series of desperate moves by the Jonathan Administration since the emergence of Buhari as the APC presidential candidate, and the clearest indication, yet, that they have no answer to the unstoppable momentum of a man of history.
“They have thrown everything imaginable at Gen. Buhari, but he has continued to wax stronger and stronger: They said he was not qualified, that he was too old, then they fabricated a medical report of an illness of their own choice, sponsored death wish adverts against him and instituted a myriad of court cases to stop him.
“After they failed to stop him, they went after the election itself, using the PVCs as a tool to launch a campaign for postponement and, when they realized that would not work, came up with the bogey of insecurity in the North-east to force a postponement of the election, hoping they can buy enough time to revive their electoral misfortune.
“With everything working against them, they engaged in a show of shame at The Chatham House that backfired badly, on the heels of their bare-faced lies that Gen. Buhari was hospitalized in London.
“The preposterous claim of a secret oath – reminiscent of what they do in their own party – by the apparently ailing spokesman of the Jonathan Campaign Organization, Femi Fani-Kayode, is their latest desperate act,” APC stated.
It stated further that in as much as it has so far refrained from engaging Fani-Kayode in his game of character assassination, abuses and irresponsible name calling, the party was becoming seriously concerned that he might be caving in under pressure and reverting to his undignified past of substance abuse.
