Oshiomhole lacks moral authority to speak on leadership -Atiku

Former Vice President and African Democratic Congress presidential aspirant, Atiku Abubakar,  has carpeted former national chairman of the All Progressives Congress and Senator representing Edo North, Adam Oshiomhole, over the latter’s accusation that the former Vice President failed to fix the leadership tussle rocking the Peoples Democratic Party.

Oshiomhole’s remarks were on the heels of the former Vice President’s official declaration for the ADC.

While speaking on Channels TV monitored programme, Politics Today, on Monday, Oshiomhole claimed that the former PDP presidential candidate’s failure to fix the PDP crises was an indication that he lacked the leadership quality to govern Nigeria.

He said: “Atiku, as a former vice president under PDP, could not fix PDP; he could not reconstruct it, he could not provide leadership and use his influence, which he had built, how can you lay claim to fix Nigeria?

“He could not build PDP. So, if Atiku can’t build PDP that made him Vice President, he can’t fix Nigeria.”

Responding through his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, the former Vice president in a statement titled, “Before You Speak, Check the Mirror,” dismissed Oshiomhole’s remarks as “nothing more than a tired distraction from the monumental failures of the APC—the very party he helped foist on Nigeria and the same party that has driven the country to its worst state in decades.”

Faulting Oshiomhole’s argument, Shaibu noted that “Atiku Abubakar was Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, not the national chairman of the PDP, and certainly not the sole administrator of a political institution with thousands of independent leaders across the country. Leadership in a democratic party is not a dictatorship. The PDP, unlike the APC, was not a private estate controlled from Bourdillon, where one individual tele-guides decisions and stifles internal democracy.

“If Oshiomhole seeks the man who ‘fixed a party’ into a personal empire, he needs only look at the godfather he serves. Under the APC, party supremacy died, dissent was criminalised, and institutions of state became partisan weapons. That is the only kind of “fixing” Oshiomhole understands.”

The presidential aide who recalled the former PDP presidential candidate’s stewardship as Vice President under his former boss, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, declared  that, “Atiku’s record speaks for itself:

“He rebuilt the economy as chairman of the National Economic Council.

“He championed reforms that attracted investment and strengthened the private sector.

“He has never been President, yet his development blueprint remains the most coherent Nigeria has seen in decades.

“The real question is this:

“If the APC could not fix Nigeria after eight wasted years and nearly three years of Tinubu, what moral authority does Oshiomhole have to comment on leadership?

“Nigerians know the truth. Atiku Abubakar represents vision, experience, and capacity.

“Oshiomhole represents noise, propaganda, and the bruising legacy of a party that betrayed the hopes of millions.

“He should sit this one out,” Shaibu stated.

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