Vice President Yemi Osinbajo yesterday launched the campaign logo of President Muhammadu Buhari’s support groups, saying the president’s return to power in 2019 is not negotiable.
He urged supporters of the president not to panic because those working against the president’s re-election are discredited members of the elites.
Specifically, the vice president said those seeking to unseat Buhari in the forthcoming general elections are enemies of the nation who looted the nation’s coffers dry.
Osinbajo spoke at a National Consultative Forum organised by the National Committee of Buhari Support Groups (NCBSG), an umbrella body of all pro-Buhari groups, in conjunction with Council for New Nigeria Initiative (CNNI), held at the Nicon Luxury Hotel, Abuja.
High points of the event was the launch and unveiling of the NCBSG campaign logo titled, ‘Consolidation 2019’ as well as the commissioning of over 100 18-seater buses purchased by the NCBSG for the campaigns by the VP.
Osinbajo cited infrastructural development, the fight against corruption, treasury single account (TSA), the school feeding programme and several other projects as achievements, which have endeared the president to the people.
He wondered why after Buhari had made the country the best economy in Africa, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which he said plundered the nation’s resources over the years, would want to stage a return in 2019.
Noting that there is a gang up against President Buhari, Osinbajo however pointed out that because certain political elements fear the president, sometimes they become desperate and even crazy.
He said, “Come February 2019 the APC will, by the grace of God, win the general elections. We will return President Muhammadu Buhari as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria for a second term. The election will be a historic one.
It is a battle between those who want our country’s resources to be used for our country and her people and those who want to privatise the commonwealth. The man who stands against the forces of retrogression but with the future of our children is the man called Muhammadu Buhari. He is not perfect man, but he is an honest and truthful man.
“He is a man who wants to use the resources of this country for the common man. Between 2010 and 2014, our nation earned the highest amount ever in history from oil- the sum of $383 billion. Just to compare in the same period we have earned less than $112 billion. But where are the roads, the rail and the power?
“When we came into office over 22 states owed between 3 to 6 months salaries. The president insisted we must support the states to pay. Yet, when we came into office oil was down to 30 dollars a barrel. We are earning 60% less than the previous government; yet in the past three years we have spent N2.7 trillion on infrastructure, the highest in the history of the country. How? We are not stealing the money. We are using it for the people.
“So, today we are doing major roads in 36 states. We are feeding 9.2 million children every day, we are giving two million petty traders a better deal in life with TraderMoni, we have now employed 50000 graduate under the NPower programme and we are giving at least 400,000 of the poorest Nigerians N5000 a month. How? Because Buhari is the gate keeper; he has stopped grand corruption. So, despite the fact that we are earning 60% less, we are doing five times more.
“This is why there is a gang up by the discredited elites against him. They prayed for him to die he didn’t die, when he came back hale and hearty, by the grace of the almighty God, they mourned while Nigerians rejoiced”.
Speaking on rumours that the president was cloned, the VP said, “The fear of Buhari makes people desperate and even crazy. Now they say he is Jubrin from Sudan. If you can’t discredit him, you say he doesn’t exist! They were all alive and well when Pastor Adeboye went to London and prayed for him the day before he returned to Nigeria.
“How will one jubrin sit in FEC and conduct meetings, consult with his ministers and speak to me daily? Their strategy is simple; if you tell a lie often enough, some (people) will believe you. Buhari is not only alive and well. He will, by God’s grace, live long and well after his second term in office.”
Delivering the key note address at the event, APC national leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu stressed that getting President Muhammadu Buhari reelected was a task that must be done.
Tinubu who maintained that the 16 year rule of the PDP was plagued with lack of direction and devoid of concern for the citizenry tagged the privatisation under Former President Obasanjo, chaired by his deputy, Atiku Abubakar, as “personalisation”.
He said, “They ruled this country from 1999 until 2015; that is 16 years. They were planning for 60 years of doing nothing, lack of direction, lack of concern for the citizenry. Look at the schools. Are we still in this country where visionary leadership is required?
If yes, they are not competent and they are not qualified to lead Nigeria again and they said they want to come back and govern. If they left the conditions of our schools in such dilapidated situations, if they left the condition of our hospitals without Medicare, without healthcare, they don’t deserve to come back.
“The illusion of those people, they can insist on lie, lies! You take their new found Jehovah witness, former President Obasanjo. Before, they disgraced the office of the presidency. They fought in public, abusing each other, telling us how they stole money for their families, buy vehicles, sell everything, petroleum and all of that. They insulted themselves; they danced naked in the market square.
“We have sacrificed too much, under the destruction of their trademark, ‘Peoples Destruction Party (PDP). We cannot go back; forward ever, back ward never.”
APC, PDP Reel Out Security Plans
Meanwhile, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Abundant Nigeria Renewal Party (ANRP) yesterday reeled out their security plans to Nigerians ahead of the 2019 elections.
The parties disclosed the plans at the Nigerian political parties’ discussions series organised by the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), in conjunction with the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) in Abuja.
Mr Osita Chidoka, one of the spokespersons of the PDP Presidential Campaign Council, said that the biggest security threat facing Nigeria today was lack of identity.
Explaining that there is no record available on criminal activities of mischievous people, he said, “The PDP will change the security sector first by moving from state centric security architecture to people centric architecture. Our focus is to move away from guns to public safety.
“We must begin to measure our output in security in terms of how secure Nigerians are by delivering public safety across all parameters. That is why the PDP’s plan is focused on reducing over centralisation of the Nigerian security force.
“PDP’s second plan is to widen the concept of policing starting from the intelligence arm which is from the DSS arm to the enforcement arm of the Police, Civil Defence, Road Safety, NAFDAC, to the courts that adjudicate on matters of criminality and then to the corrective side which is the prisons.’’
Chidoka said that there would be no bottlenecks in delivering security because if the outcome on the enforcement side is improved, it would impact on the adjudication side which would, in turn, impact on the correction side.
On its part, the APC said the party has three plans to revamp the security sector in the next phase of its leadership by increasing the number of policemen.
National publicity secretary of the party, Lanre Isah-Oniru, said this is because the number of policemen has always been inadequate to police the Nigerian population, which the APC is conscious of.
He also said that the APC would train security agents on all the details of policing and intelligence gathering in order to have a 21st century security system.
He added that the welfare of security personnel would be looked into to ensure good salaries and other welfare packages to motivate them to do more.
“This government is focused on addressing those three issues. It is not a promise but it is what is already going on because the salaries of the police had just been increased,” he said.
Isah-Oniru said APC would mop up all money for the benefit of all citizens so that people would no longer have free money to steal because the resources would be used to improve the lives of all citizens, especially those at the grassroots.
He said Nigeria, in the next few years under APC, will be secured and conducive for business and stability.
Mr Tope Fasua, Presidential Candidate of ANRP said that a lot of security problems arose from poverty and hunger in the society, adding the party would tackle insecurity through economic stability.
Fasua said that to achieve this, the party would work hard to double Nigeria’s national budget and grow ‘her economy, targeting a budget of N15 trillion to take people out of poverty.