Presidency To Abaribe: Your Call On Buhari To Resign Is Foolish

From Jane Okafor, 

Abuja

Less than 12 hours after Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe from Abia State  had called on President Muhammadu Buhari to resign from office over the inability or failure of his administration to tackle growing orgies of banditry, kidnapping and insurgency in the country, The Presidency dismissed the call as "foolish" and "baseless."

Abaribe, a People's Democratic Party (PDP) Senator had on Wednesday taken the floor of the Senate Chamber during plenary Presided over by the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, to express concern over the spate of banditry and Boko Haram insurgents amid the President's comments that he was surprised about the insecurity situation in the country.

Abaribe said: “When I was coming this morning, I saw a newspaper headline of THISDAY, which said: the ‘Commander-In-Chief expresses shock at the level of violent crimes’ in the country.

“In other words, Mr President was expressing surprise but in accordance to our rules in Order 53 (13), I will not go into that but I can only say in pidgin English ‘this surprise, surprise me.’

“Mr. President, you have told us that on this solemn day and in discussing this matter, that we may not at any point be partisan.

“I want to say Mr. President, if you didn’t insist that we will not be partisan, I would have called out the presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina, who when the CAN (Christian Association of Nigeria) leaders complained about the killing of a priest, he turned around and said CAN was acting like a political party.

“Now that we are talking about it here, let me hear him say that all of us are acting like a political party when many are complaining about these incessant deaths in this country.

“Because we have to get to the root of this matter, I can only say one thing: those who live by propaganda will die by propaganda.

“This is a matter of life and death and I was building up to something and I will say what I was building up to simply.

“Boko Haram has been defeated, Nigeria is now safer, everything that was being done to make sure that the hard work that was supposed to be done in securing Nigeria was not done because certain people did not do their work but preferred to cover the eyes of Nigerians with propaganda and trying to find all these excuses for non-performance have now come to stare us in the face.

“Mr President, Nigerians did not elect the Inspector General of Police, we did not elect the Chief of Staff, we did not elect the Joint Chiefs or the National Security Adviser.

“We elected the government of APC in 2015 and re-elected them in 2019. The reason we re-elected them is that they continued to tell us that they had the key to security.

“When you want to deal with a matter, you go to the head, so we will go to government and ask this government to resign because they can no longer do anything.

"In conclusion, I want to say that Nigerians voted a government into power and that government even said ‘if we don’t perform stone us’ we are going with the stones to stone them now."

But reacting, the Senior Special Assistant to the President(Media &Publicity), Garba Shehu,  said Abaribe's call does not represent the opinion of the country, stressing that if a leader like President Buhari needs to resign, there were millions of other Nigerians who needed to resign also, including Senator Abaribe who unlocked the door to enable the escape of traitorous and treasonable suspects - apparently referring to some leaders and members of the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).

Garba stated: "President Buhari to resign on what basis?Just because some characters think that President Buhari should resign, then they expect him to quit. That call does not represent the opinion of the country. This is the opinion of an arm chair critic, known for making stray comments.

"If a leader like President Buhari needs to resign, there are millions of other Nigerians who need to resign, including Senator Abaribe who unlocked the door to enable the escape of traitorous and treasonable suspects.

"He signed the bond for the court to release Nnamdi Kanu on bail, from which moment the suspect disappeared into the thin air. Senator Abaribe has failed repeated deadlines to return Kanu to the court for trial, yet he has the effrontery with which to accuse someone of failing to the bidding of the law.

"This is a man who should have replaced the suspects he failed to produce in the correctional facility.

"Abaribe’s party raped the nation and left it collapsing in 2015 and President Buhari is fixing things up all the years he is in office.

"President Buhari is working hard to keep Nigeria and Nigerians out of the harm terrorists have unleashed in the entire Sahel and Sub-Saharan Africa with the support of Nigerians and our foreign friends, he is going to finish off these terrorists.  He alone can do it."