Trump’s comment: Buhari has caused us global embarrassment -PDP

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has said that reports quoting United States President, Donald Trump, describing President Muhammadu Buhari as “lifeless” is an embarrassment which has opened the nation to international ridicule.

The party said such embarrassment is a backlash a nation gets when incompetent leaders resort to jumping around the world, desperately shopping for endorsement from world leaders.

The party in a statement by its spokesperson, Kola Ologbondiyan said Buhari has been seeking international recognitions that are not predicated on any achievements from his three years in office.

The PDP consequently urged the President to take a cue from the comments ascribed to Trump by settling down at home and discharge his responsibilities to Nigerians or humbly accept his failings.

He said, “While the PDP has strong reservations on the reported comment by President Trump, for which we demand a response from the Buhari Presidency and the US White House, the party further holds that had our dear President not cheapened the exalted office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria by his woeful outing during his visit to the United States,

President Trump would not have had the opportunity to assess his level of incompetence and make such an embarrassing statement about our President.

“The PDP and indeed all well-meaning Nigerians are now sore worry over how other world leaders have been perceiving our President, who has not only failed in governance but has continued to demarket our nation in the international community”.

The party however ,urged Nigerians not to be downcast by the embarrassing situation the nation has found itself, especially as the 2019 general election, which comes in the next six months, offers the nation the ample opportunity to get it right on the choice of competent leadership Nigerians can be proud of.

The PDP in a separate statement by Ologbondiyan told President Buhari that his statement claiming that rule of law will become secondary to his whims and self-determined “national interest” is strange to the laws of the land and completely unacceptable.

The party said the assertion is a direct trademark of despotic rulers and as such cannot find expression or accommodation in a democratic setting of our contemporary nation.

The PDP expressed readiness to rally Nigerians to reject every attempt by President Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC) to introduce the long forgotten trappings of military dictatorship into our democratic rule, which Nigerians labored for many years to attain.

The party further stated that it will not stop at anything legitimate to ensure that the International Criminal Court (ICC) holds President Buhari responsible for violations of rule of law and criminal abuse of human rights committed under his rule in the last three years.

“It is instructive to note that contrary to claims by Mr. President, there is no pronouncement by the Supreme Court that subjugates constitutional rule of law and rights of citizens to the whims, caprices and dictatorial impulses of any President.

“Our national interest is thoroughly embedded, protected, expressed and enforced only under the rule of law as provided by our constitution and there is no how Nigerians can allow an individual to superimpose or override the constitution with his personal whims and impulses;

a pattern that is characteristic of known dictators all over the world, as expressed in the obnoxious Executive Order 6, designed to justify a complete clamp down of political opponents ahead of 2019 general elections.

“President Buhari should therefore be made to answer for the litany of human rights violations in Nigeria, including documented disobedience to court orders, extra-judicial and arbitrary executions, unlawful arrests and political detentions, killing of persons in custody, torture

and excessive use of force by security forces on innocent citizens, destruction of property, restriction of free speech, press, official corruption and lack of accountability as detailed in report by various international bodies, including Transparency International (TI), Amnesty International (AI) and US Department of States”, the party added.

The PDP said that President Buhari is apprehensive of the electoral defeat that awaits him in February 2019 for which he is seeking ways to subvert the system, and so cautioned that in this desperation to hold unto to power, he must not seek to again, subvert our constitutional order as he will be firmly resisted by Nigerians.