Feb 16 poll: Don’t trust Atiku with your future, Tinubu tells Nigerians

…Says Ex-VP does not mean well for them, will only enrich his privileged friends

…’Buhari’s objective is to remake Nigeria into a great nation’

Patrick Okohue

Former Lagos State governor and co-Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has called on all Nigerians, especially those of the South West region to rally support for the APC’s banner of progressive governance for the benefit of all people, as the nation goes to the poll from tomorrow. Tinubu in a statement he personally signed urged the people not to be deceived by the campaign promises of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its candidate in tomorrow’s election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, who he said had opportunity to turn the lives of Nigerians round while in office, but rather “misappropriated his eight previous years in high office.” The National Leader of the APC urged Nigerians to be wary of Atiku and his promises, as voting for him will only mean talking massive steps backward in the development of the nation, while voting the APC candidate, President Muhammadu Buhari, means a huge leap forward. He said: “This election is more than a contest between two men, President Muhammadu Buhari and former VP Atiku Abubakar, for that one exalted chair. The election is nothing less than a historic encounter pitting one vision and version of our future against another. “Since walking backwards has never appeared to me as an efficient or responsible way for a person to proceed, let alone for a nation to surmount the difficult obstacles that nations must overcome, I cannot find much good in the policies and programmes announced by the PDP. “Former VP Atiku misappropriated his eight previous years in high office. His occupancy of high office was best characterised by low deeds. Self-enrichment occurred at lightning speed, but social welfare moves slower than a dousing snail.” Alleging that Atiku’s presidency will be characterised by cronyism among a clique of friends to the detriment of the larger majority, Tinubu said: “Just a few weeks ago, Atiku offered his vision of the economy when he said that enriching his friends would be an appropriate objective of any government he led. “At best, patronage is a regrettable and necessary reality of politics that should be severely curtailed. But Atiku goes in the opposite direction. He bypasses patronage to brazenly elevate the much greater evil of cronyism from the shadows to make it the central plank of his national economic policy.” Admitting his friendship with Atiku, he went on, “Look, I have made no attempts to hide my friendship with Atiku. We were friends before this election and hopefully we will be friends after February 16 when he goes into retirement. Despite our friendship, I must say the type of enrichment of friends he envisions does not recommend itself to me. It is unjust and impoverishes all but a handful of Nigerians. I want no part of such enrichment for my love of Nigeria and its people is far greater and deeper than my friendship with Atiku. For the good of Nigeria and even the good of Atiku himself, we do well to send him into retirement on Saturday.” Alleging further that Atiku has a total disregard for the common man, Tinubu said he is not alone, as most of his key advisers have shown such disdain for the less privileged. “Atiku is not alone in his disregard for the common man. Such disregard is the true brand name of the PDP and its powerful, rich allies. “Several weeks ago during a television interview, Atiku’s Chief Economic Advisor, Chike Obi intimated a strong preference to discontinue the social welfare payments the Buhari government established for the poorest of the nation’s poor. Obi’s rationale was that the nation could not afford to offer even this modest safety net. “While in Obi’s eyes a nation possessed of the abundant material wealth of Nigeria could ill afford to give its poorest citizens enough naira merely to survive, Obi’s boss was reveling that he would further enrich already wealthy cronies. “Obi was completely wrong that the nation does not have sufficient resources while his boss was utterly wrong in how he would use that abundance to fatten the wallets of his friends while leaving the pockets of the masses lean and empty. “Perhaps, we should also send Obi into retirement along with his boss come February 16. Perhaps together they might manage to discover the place where they might learn compassion for the common man. “Just this week, Atedo Peterside, a banker prominent in PDP circles, published a bewildering lament professing he could not understand why, even in his latest polls, President Buhari maintained a marked lead over Atiku. “In essence, Peterside was griping that the people are not wise enough to make up their own economic minds. They would be better off if they allowed him to substitute his judgment for theirs. Peterside’s article was written with the desperate yet arrogant frenzy of those who fear their unjust economic privilege is swiftly unraveling. They fiercely clutch to their position, yet the castle they have built in the clouds is crumbling into dust then to vanish into vapor. The clock now tolls midnight on their system economic elitism.” While insisting that the freedom enjoyed by the wealthy is paid for by a heavy tax on the wages and work of the average person, the former Lagos governor said the PDP seeks an economy that provides the welfare of riches to the powerful while telling the average man that there is not enough money to go around to build an economy that will ensure he can take care of his basic needs. “They seek an unfair, unjust and unequal Nigeria. Their definition of Nigeria is a nation run by the greedy, for the profit of the rich, at the command of the mighty. “In this, the PDP is involved neck-deep in the greatest political swindle of this generation. Their real slogan should be “more for the rich, nothing for the rest!” “Only then will they be telling the plain truth about themselves. “Our objective must be no less than to remake Nigeria into a great nation. This is a lofty goal, but we should not be afraid of lofty aspirations. Only by reaching upward can we pull ourselves from where we are that we grow closer to what we should become. “Unlike the PDP, we, the APC, are anchored to the proposition that every Nigerian is entitled to equal access and sufficient economic opportunity so that he may use his talents, skills and committed exertion to carve for himself and his loved ones the decent and good life every human being seeks. “Yes, the rich and wealthy are entitled to the full enjoyment of the fruits of their exertions and enterprise. But so is the common man. The ordinary person is not to be shortchanged of the fair dividends of his honest sweat and diligent labour simply because he may be poor or because the powerful wealthy want more. “We believe government can spur the economy toward full employment of labour and our national resources during those times the private sector is not strong enough to shoulder this responsibility alone. “Government is the agent of the people to further reform our political economy such that the light of shared prosperity, social tolerance and collective purpose shall forever shine across our national landscape and never be extinguished,” Tinubu said. He added that “because of the APC’s concerns for the struggles of the average person, we launched beneficial social welfare programs such as the school feeding program, Trader-Moni and N-Power. “As such, we have made progress caring for our most needy and vulnerable through these and other innovative and unprecedented policies. These programmes are of the type all great nations do for their citizens. “However, the APC is not satisfied by what has been accomplished. What has been done is but the opening phase of a more ambitious undertaking. We have just begun to fight poverty and reform this economy on the scale required. “Though we have helped millions, several millions more need to end poverty’s stranglehold on their lives. We must expand the scope and reach of our social welfare programmes to encompass those other people who have been denied access to the productive economy through no fault of their own. “Additionally, we must put idle hands to work to build a modern infrastructure that will energise agricultural output in rural areas and foster labour-intensive industrialisation in our growing cities,” he said and went on to list some of the areas the government has focused attention in the last almost four years to include power, infrastructure, industrialisation, agriculture, housing, and social security as a way of creating better life for the people