Director-general of the Muhammadu Buhari Presidential Campaign Organisation, Rotimi Amaechi, said the Peoples Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, does not have all that it takes to contend with his candidate in 2019 election.
This Day reports that Amaechi, a former governor of Rivers state, who made this known on Thursday, November 15, said the PDP doesn’t offer any alternative.
Amaechi said the campaign organisation would decide on whether to advise Buhari to participate in the debate for 2019 election when the time comes, adding that it will be based on its assessment of the situation.
“As soon as PDP elected its presidential candidate, the first thing that went to the social media was corruption. I am not saying whether he is corrupt or not, but the first battle you had in the social media was to battle the issue of corruption and those issues of corruption were the things said by ex-President Obasanjo.
“There are two issues that we will be focusing on, corruption; Nigerians will have to decide whether to go back to the stealing, where Nigerian government was borrowing money to pay salary. We are not borrowing money to pay salary now; where we were importing tomatoes, when we can plant tomatoes at home; when we were buying about 500,000 eggs per day from South Africa; and now that we are producing the eggs.
“The reason is that there are too many issues to debate about. For 16 years, vice president Abubakar was in power for eight years, did they do anything on railways, the answer is no. I saw in my office, contracts awarded by the last government, to Nigerians who do not know anything about railways. To build a narrow gauge, how much was spent? That is why I said I would not pay and I won’t pay, when I leave the next person can pay them because these Nigerians did nothing and they are asking to be paid for having rehabilitated the narrow gauge.”
On the forthcoming campaigns, Amaechi said it will be issues-based. He denied that the party ever promised to make naira equivalent to dollar during the 2015 elections.
Amaechi said: “We will be telling Nigerians the same thing – don’t let thieves come to power again. The president never said he will make naira equal to dollar. We are not that cheap economists, we don’t practice voodoo economy.
“The president was clear during his campaign. ‘I will ensure that insecurity is tackled; I will ensure that we rebuild the economy and create employment; I will ensure that corruption is tackled because corruption is the basis in which we are finding ourselves into these entire problems.
“I give you this example, by the time we assumed office, we discover that PDP had taken $2 billion from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and we followed the money. It was in everybody’s private pockets. The railway line from Lagos to Kano is $2.6 billion. So, we would have had two times that project with the money.”
Meanwhile, we had reported that Professor Danny McCain, ambassador, Global Scholars from the United States of America, said President Buhari and Atiku Abubakar must accept the outcome of the 2019 presidential election to avoid bloodshed in the country.
Speaking on Friday, October 12, in Abuja, at the 9th annual Independence lecture with the theme: “The Nigeria of our Dream,” organised by The Change we NEED Nigeria Initiative, McCain said every vote must count, Nigeria Tribune reports.
He said the outcome of the election must reflect the aspirations of the people. He further expressed optimism that the next election would be peaceful as demonstrated by the former president Goodluck Jonathan when he accepted defeat and stepped down.
