Your provocative comments can embolden terrorists, PDP tells Buhari

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has described President Muhammadu Buhari’s interview on ARISE Television as evasive and dodgy.

That party also warned that his provocative comments could embolden terrorists in the country.

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The National Publicity Secretary of PDP, Kola Ologbondiyan, stated this at a press conference, at the National headquarters of the party in Abuja, on Thursday.

Ologbondiyan alleged that Buhari bungled the opportunity of the interview, which millions of Nigerians awaited.

He accused the president of laying claims to projects done by PDP administrations, instead of addressing salient issues confronting the nation.

“On Infrastructure, it is ludicrous to us in the PDP that Mr. President can disingenuously seek to subtract the deliverables achieved by past PDP administration from his so-called achievement on infrastructure.

“The PDP places it on record and we know that Nigerians are also aware that President Olusegun Obasanjo, who was elected on the platform of the PDP, introduced a 25 years national development plan upon assumption of office in 1999.

“This included the massive construction and expansion of road network, power plants, railways projects, inland and coastal waterways, airports, housing, agricultural and health projects as well as establishment of new universities and other legacy projects in various parts of our country.

“We want to inform President Buhari, since he is not always aware, that successive governments elected on the platform of the PDP built on these development plans leading to the expansion of major trunk roads across our country, railways and other legacy projects which, probably, his handlers are making him to believe are his.

“It is on record that President Goodluck Jonathan also took on a massive expansion of our international and domestic airports, across the country, built and commissioned railway stations.

“It is instructive to state that where projects were yet to be completed, it is only a natural occurrence for any Nigerian elected as President to proceed, in the national interest, to complete such projects.

“The PDP therefore considers it tacky for Mr. President to seek to claim any credit for projects he never conceptualized, commenced or built to near completion, just because he found himself in office at the point of completion.

“Should Mr. President be reminded that even the expansion of the Presidential Villa including the Banquet Hall, which his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) uses today as its National Secretariat was conceptualized and built by the PDP government, though leaders of the APC stood stoutly against the project while it was on-going?

“President Buhari also needs to accept the bitter fact that the current draw back in infrastructural development in our country started with his administration. Like a relay race, successive PDP administrations furthered infrastructural development only for him to run the opposite direction when the baton was passed to him.

“It is important to state that only the on-going refurbishing of Akwanga-Maiduguri road that President Buhari can lay claim to as the singular and only project in which he has demonstrated capacity.

“The expectation of Nigerians is that in an interview like this, Mr. President should give honour to those who conceptualized and built these projects to near completion and, in most cases, only for him to perform the commissioning ceremony.”