A statement issued by his campaign office in Abuja on Sunday recalled that while speaking at a public lecture, entitled: ‘Developing the Nation through Youth Empowerment’, as part of activities marking the 68th anniversary of the Sigma Club, University of Ibadan, Professor Osinbajo said: “All this time, this was 2000, some of those people, including the presidential candidate of PDP, who is talking about restructuring, was the vice president then, they opposed every step that we took. Of course, we were taking the Federal Government to court then. They opposed every step.”
The statement said given that restructuring has become the major issue in the 2019 elections and given that Prof Osinbajo and President Muhammadu Buhari have been speaking discordant tunes on restructuring, “we can understand their desperation to revise history, however, it is impossible to revise documented history.”
The statement posited that Osinbajo needed to be reminded that there are well-documented accounts in the Nigerian media chronicling Atiku Abubakar’s support and struggle for restructuring.
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It noted: “To set the records straight, we recommend to Professor Osinbajo the article ‘Nigeria: 6-1 Onshore-Offshore Jurisdiction Verdict’ written by Jide Ajani, then the Political Editor of VanguardNewspapers and published on July 13, 2001.
“In that piece, which is still available online (see link https://allafrica.com/stories/
“It is also common knowledge that the six geopolitical zones structure which all parts of Nigeria benefit from today is the fruit of the collaborative efforts of His Excellency, Atiku Abubakar, the late Alex Ekwueme and other patriots.
“Their efforts at restructuring Nigeria are captured in the Hansard of the 1995 Constitutional Conference, which is a public document and is still available at the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation. Professor Osinbajo may want to familiarise himself with that document.
“The question we want to ask Professor Osinbajo is this, why do he and his boss constantly resort to rewriting history? Why can they not campaign on their achievements? Is it that they are forced to campaign on subterfuge because they have no achievements to campaign on?”
The statement also recalled that President Buhari and Vice President Osinbajo promised to make ₦1 equal to $1, adding: “They vowed to create three million jobs per annum. They promised to pay the unemployed a “job seekers allowance. They said subsidy was a scam. They also said that they would defeat Boko Haram.
“Nigerians want to know if these promises have been kept. They are not interested in fairy tales about how Atiku Abubakar did not support restructuring because they know that he is and was and will always be an active promoter of restructuring.
“Everywhere he goes to campaign, Atiku Abubakar has used temperate and respectful language on both President Buhari and Vice President Osinbajo. He has campaigned on his record of achievements, which include the 50,000 jobs he has created in his private capacity, and on his policies and plans to Get Nigeria Working Again.
“We recommend this form of decent politicking to Prof. Osinbajo, even as we urge him to remember that as Vice President, his words matter.”
Osinbajo had been reported as saying that politicians who made restructuring their campaign stronghold were doing so to win votes.
Speaking of Atiku in particular, the Vice President had added: “The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, who is talking about restructuring today, was the Vice President then. They opposed every step that we took. Of course, we were taking the Federal Government to court then. They opposed every step.
“The next thing we did was that the states should be able to create their own local governments, which is autonomy of states. So, we created 47 new local governments in Lagos. The president then, Olusegun Obasanjo, seized our local government funds and said we could not create new local governments. So, they seized the funds they were supposed to allocate for our local governments.
“We challenged the seizure by going to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court held that the president had no right to seize the funds meant for local governments and that we have a right to create local governments.
“After we have created the local governments, the process was not complete. we must still take the list of new local governments to the National Assembly and the National Assembly will then amend the whole list of the local governments in the country.
“We could not get the National Assembly’s endorsement. So, we passed the LCDA Law. We created 47 local council development areas.”
and then