ABUJA, FEBRUARY 15, 2018 – The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has asked the President, Muhammadu Buhari to heed the advice of the leader of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Bola Tinubu, that Nigeria’s ex-presidents should quit politics and join the ‘retirees’ club’.
The party in a statement by its national publicity secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, on its official Twitter handle on Wednesday said the former Lagos State governor Bola Tinubu has ”weighed Buhari and found him not fit to remain in office beyond 2019.”
The APC leader, reacting to statements by two former leaders, Olusegun Obasanjo and Ibrahim Babangida, who recently advised President Buhari not to seek re-election in 2019, said they should join what he called the retirees’ club and collect pensions.
Mr. Tinubu said this on Tuesday while addressing State House correspondents after he and a former interim chairman of the party, Bisi Akande, met with the president at the Presidential Villa, in Abuja.
The PDP’s statement reads in part:
“Every discerning Nigerian has discovered the fact that Tinubu is subtly passing a critical message to President Buhari and his supporters that he should not contest the 2019 election and that Nigerians have already moved on even without them.
“Even Tinubu knows that President Buhari, for obvious reasons, is the most qualified of all our elder statesmen to join the retiree’s club and save the nation the agony of more years of misrule characterised by untold economic hardship, heavy bloodletting and general indignation.
“The supporters of President Buhari should therefore accept the reality by reading the handwriting on the wall and heed wise counsel from well-meaning Nigerians.
“In any case, the APC is already on a death throe, having led the worst government in the history of our nation and will end up as the first party in government at the centre that will be rejected by Nigerians at a second attempt.”
