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In a swift reaction in Abuja, Mallam Garba Shehu, APCPCO’s Director of Media and Publicity punctured the said provocative advertisement as the handiwork of a failed President and his ruinous party, the PDP to tarnish the hard won credibility and integrity of Gen. Buhari.
“The PDP is a troubled-cannon; firing salvos in all directions, accidentally and incidentally, without caution, care or conscience. With the stark reality of defeat staring them in the face on March 28 and April 11 general elections, a reward for their maladministration, incumbent President Jonathan and his co-travellers have intensified their global campaign of calumny and outright fallacy – their well-known stock in trade.
“Nigerians are yet to forget the phoney phone call to the King of Morocco that never was or the futile effort to stop Buhari from speaking to the world at UK think tank at Chatham House, where their rented crowd confessed to being paid for a hatchet job,” Shehu said.
Shehu said the PDP was only clutching to irrelevant and irreverent decoys after abandoning serious issues of lack of power, insecurity, disunity, unemployment, infrastructural decay, comatose economy, and dysfunctional educational and health sectors, among others that affect the lives of the citizens and are concrete and poignant to the polls.
“How does a former media aide to US Ambassadors to the United Nations, now a partner in www.capitolmediapartners.comsuddenly got adorned in the garb of an emissary or envoy by the PDP?” Shehu queries. For the avoidance of doubt Richard Grenell is not a US ex-envoy but a former spokesperson for four past US Ambassadors to the United Nations
According to his bio, in 2009 Richard Grenell launched Capitol Media Partners, an international strategic media and public affairs consultancy. His agency provides strategic counsel for companies and individuals (like Jonathan and the PDP) facing critical media and public policy challenges. Mr Grenell’s firm ”Capitol Media Partners” was recruited by the Presidency and the PDP to say those unfortunate statements about General Buhari. Mr Grenell made those statements not as an envoy or diplomat but as a media contractor for the Presidency and the PDP. You may confirm the authenticity of Mr Grenell from his firm’s website http://capitolmediapartners.com/
The APC Spokesman said the latest lie by this government and the ruling PDP underscores the new low to which Nigeria’s foreign policy drift has sunk under the Jonathan government, which hires all manners of local and global quacks, to manage their tattered image marked by cluelessness, incompetence, squander-mania, meteoric corruption and dearth of developmental ideas.
Meanwhile, the supreme laws of Nigeria as enshrined in the country’s Constitution does not allow for the dominance of one religion above the other. Nigeria is a multi religious state and cannot be a theocracy as propagated in Grenell’s a-dozen-for-a-US-Dollar opinion article.
“With popular political indicators embracing the APC message of Change, and the PDP losing followership all over the country through mass defections, the drowning men of PDP are clawing to weightless straws for survival.
“How can a foreigner without a grasp of the ethics, ethos and ethno-religious diversity of our country be the one to tell us who and how we should be governed as a people? Only a cheap and sleazy government would increase its dastardly mission of increasing disaffection at home, where it has caused split in national institutions such as the Nigeria Labour Congress, National Association of Nigerian Students, Christian Association of Nigeria, Afenifere Group, Arewa Consultative Forum, Northern Elders Association, Ohaneze Ndigbo, among a legion of others by venturing disastrously abroad for global mercenaries,” Shehu stressed.
He continued: “Buhari in the early 1980s, as a serving General Officer Commanding, led the army that promptly and effectively defeated the Islamic Sect of Maitasine. So for anyone to link Buhari to religious insensitivity and fanaticism is grossly unfair, malicious and libellous. The APC is a party is reflective of the diversities of Nigeria. The Chairman of the party, Chief John Odigie Oyegun, a former state governor, is a Christian; same as the Director General of APC Presidential Campaign, Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State. Other stakeholders are Chief Audu Ogbeh, Chief Tony Momoh, Dr. Kayode Fayemi and Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State, among others. How can anyone under a democratic dispensation Islamise or Christianise a country in the 21st Century.”
Meanwhile, the All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Organisation (APCPCO) says it had been vindicated on its stance of not participating in the presidential campaign debates, owing to the outbreak of rumpus among the organizers, the Nigeria Election Debate Group (NEDG) has been compromised.
A press statement signed by the Director of Media and Publicity of the APC campaign, Mallam Garba Shehu on Sunday, noted that sordid details coming out of organizers of the debate would have tainted the APC candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari, had he presented himself to the group.
A civil society group with knowledge of the working of the NEDG, Value and Integrity Group alleged at a press conference on Friday, that a First Bank account opened for the NEDG had the Founder of AIT and Raypower, Chief Raymond Dokpesi as sole signatory, even though he is not listed as one of the directors of the NEDG.
The group also alleged that the leading private television’s network address was used for the documentation of the First Bank account instead of the NEDG’s office address.
According to leaders of the Value and Integrity Group, Sina Odugbemi and Popoola Ajayi, co-ordinator and secretary respectively, “an initial deposit of N1 million was paid into the said First Bank account, and on March 28, 2011, another N20 million belonging to the NEDG was paid into the personal account of the said Founder of the leading private television network.”
“We at the APC Presidential Campaign got the eye-opening news of the press conference by the Value and Integrity Group accusing the Nigeria Election Debate Group, the crux of the allegation being that some members of the NEDG have been monetarily influenced.
“Although the group failed to mention from what source the monies came from, we had taken a position, based on intelligence made available to us that the PDP has compromised the integrity of an unnamed few in the NEDG with huge and ridiculous sums of money.
“And watching President Goodluck Jonathan reading from a prepared script gleefully as he answered questions in the debate confirmed our suspicion that there will be “EXPO”. Without a fore-knowledge of the question to be asked, how did the president come with prepared answers?
“These two scenarios: The allegation of corrupt inducements in the NEDG and the president reading from a prepared script during the debate validates our reasons for abstaining from the debate.”
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