Senator Tinubu said this in a statement entitled: “TINUBU REMAINS TRUE TO THE APC VISION AND THE NIGERIAN PROJECT,” issued on his behalf by his media aide, Sunday Dare, on Sunday, as reaction to reports that he was conspiring with the Senate President to bring down President Muhammadu Buhari.
Dare, in the statement, said Tinubu “remains glued to the party’s decision that the manner by which Saraki captured his current seat travestied party discipline. It was a crass act of disloyalty showing that Saraki may have joined the APC on paper, but has remained true to the malpractices and wrong aims of the reactionary PDP in his soul.”
The statement described the alleged conspiracy as a figment, saying “it takes minimum of two people to make a conspiracy. There has been no substantive communication between Tinubu and Saraki since the latter decided to foul the integrity of the Senate and the party. To be truthful, I don’t think Saraki would care to hear what Tinubu would have to say to him.
Tinubu counseled Saraki “to shelve his personal situation for the moment and concentrate on the people’s business. It will be a grave mistake and abuse of office for Saraki to directly or indirectly inject his personal matter into the approval process. Saraki should not link the approval of a single minister to his desire for extrajudicial treatment of his issues.
“The senator should treat the nomination process with dispatch, justice, fairness, transparency, and most of all with the greatest patriotism.
“Those who midwifed this garish tale, gave birth not to truth, but lies intended to kill APC unity and to retard the Buhari-led administration’s strategic reform initiatives, as earlier outlined by our party manifesto. Given the potential for change that stands before us, we are now beginning to see the true nature of many people. There are those who truly want positive change so that we can break from the ways of a stolid past. “Then there are those who speak of change with their mouths, but never believe in it in their hearts. They came along with us for the ride or because no other political option availed itself at the operative time. Now, given the chance to redeem themselves from their past political actions, they would rather return to the political morass from whence they came.
“The idea of an alleged conspiracy between Tinubu and Saraki against the president is an execrable lie. Without any proof except the veil of innuendo and some hate-mongers masquerading as Presidency sources, the story proclaimed that the government is surveilling Tinubu because of his purported unhappiness about the ministerial list.
“He would not toss aside a lifetime’s labour because of an alleged slight and certainly would not join with Senator Saraki in stymieing this government which may just be the nation’s last best chance to salvage itself.
“Too mischievous yet cowardly for their own good, the yarn-spinners at the SUN neglect to precisely state what terrible thing they believe Tinubu to have done. This ambiguity is in part purposeful; their villainy seeks to place the innocent on edge and to cause those who must work together if the nation is to progress to begin to doubt the bona fides of each other.
“With such a story, they hope to break the walls of confidence so that they may kindle mutual animus between the president and Tinubu. By getting the two to fight and weaken each other, they may then swoop down to destroy both.
“If this nation is to have more than a fleeting chance of escaping the quagmire into which years of PDP misrule have taken us, we cannot allow these regressive elements to deploy their cunning tricks to divide and pitch progressive against progressive.
“Here, I will state explicitly what they hoped to get the reader to infer. Their claim is that Tinubu has joined with Saraki to scuttle the president’s ministerial nominations. They have misfired.
“Their wrong is a great wrong. Like the rest of us, Tinubu waited for the president to select his cabinet. The majority of the selections have been made. There is nothing to do, but congratulate the appointees and pray for them. Their responsibilities are vast, the future of the nation now rests on their shoulders. The challenges before them are manifold and daunting. Those who want the best for Nigeria can only hope that these people succeed.
“The only intervention that Senator Tinubu would make is one of encouragement. He would charge them to remain true to the progressive vision of the party and our president. None should allow themselves to be enticed to join league with those who would cast us back into the old mold of PDP governance: to pilfer, destroy and pillage. Instead, they should cohere faithfully to the enlightened programmes and promises made by our party and this government,” the statement stressed.
"If adhering to the decisions of the party, supporting the government’s progressive plank and working for the good of the people qualifies Tinubu for surveillance, then he will accept that. However, we know that any such surveillance is not from state security organs. Such activity would come from the insecurity agencies of the PDP and its mercenary allies elsewhere who would seek to fragment the true core of the APC so that they may scuttle the Buhari reform programme and return the nation to the misgovernance of the past. They hope to delude the APC into attacking itself. By so doing, they believe they can regain through stealth, the reins of government the people seized from them through elections. They seek to break the hearts and hopes of the people. Asiwaju Tinubu would never team with anyone to gain such an inhumane objective.
Tags
Politics