Hostilities in Presidency: Buhari’s FEC cancerous, should be disbanded – PDP

…Says APC govt has failed to provide organized leadership for Nigeria

Tunde Opalana, Abuja

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has said that the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Executive Council (FEC) has become cancerous, disorganized, chaotic, and incapable of driving an organized, result-oriented system and as such should be disbanded.

The party’s position was predicated on the degenerated hostilities among officials in the Buhari Presidency, including Presidential aides, ministers and heads of agencies, which have “further exposed a scandalous breakdown of the administration’s central command system”.

In a statement Tuesday by its national publicity secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, the party asserted that this situation is a mark of failure by the Buhari Presidency and the All Progressives Congress (APC) to provide organized leadership for the nation.

The PDP said a situation where officials are constantly at daggers drawn among themselves in “unending clashes, backbiting, betrayals, leakage of sensitive documents and internal bickering over pecuniary and political interests, in manners not different from street skirmishes of common cult groups”, is unacceptable to Nigerians.

The party said “it is indeed shocking that the acrimony had sunk to a situation where the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, reportedly evicted the staff of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) from their allocated office, with guns, while the Chairman of the Commission, Hon. Abike Dabiri, was on official assignment with the President.

“Currently, the newly appointed Chief of Staff to the President, Prof. Ibrahim Gambari and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, are said to be at each other’s throat, with the SGF reportedly querying the decision of the President to sack the former Director of the Transmission Company of Nigeria, Mr. Usman Mohammed. The situation had degenerated into serious confusion in the federal executive.

“Nigerians can recall the bitter wrangling, wherein the National Security Adviser (NSA), Maj. Gen Babagana Monguno, earlier this year, alerted that Presidential responsibilities, including presiding over sensitive security matters, have been hijacked by late Chief of Staff, Mallam Abba Kyari, thereby frustrating the fight against insurgency and acts of violence ravaging our country.

“Furthermore, the power sector is still under the stress of squabbling between the SGF and the Minister of Power, Sale Mamman, with the SGF, reinstating some officials who were sacked by the minister in December last year.

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“The nation has also not forgotten the embarrassing public fight between the First Lady, Aisha Buhari and President Muhammadu Buhari’s cousins, over rooms in the Presidential villa, which further exposed the chaotic situation in the President Buhari-led administration.

“Before then, the First Lady had alerted the nation that a cabal had hijacked the federal executive and taken over governance of our nation.

“It is sad that presidential hostilities had resulted in escalated cases of internal sabotage including the leakage of sensitive documents as exposed by the Head of Service, Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan and recently witnessed in the embarrassing leakage of President Buhari’s draft COVID-19 speech.

“Nigerians can now see how vulnerable our nation has become and why it is extremely difficult for our country to witness any progress under the Buhari Presidency, which has also ruined all the gains achieved under the PDP.

“Indeed, no nation can achieve meaningful development under a rancorous and shambolic federal executive council as currently constituted, with the height of irredeemable division among them”.

It posited that such a situation never obtained under the watch of the PDP administration in the country.

The party, therefore, counseled President Buhari to re-direct the course of the nation’s tides by disbanding his “poorly assembled and dysfunctional” Federal Executive Council.

“He should foreclose the parochial posturing of his administration by engaging more competent hands to run the affairs of our nation”, the party admonished President Buhari.