The Peoples Democratic Party has cautioned the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, against using the opposition party to boost his political image.
The PDP accused the former Lagos State Governor of resorting to hurling insults at it to get political relevance, ostensibly for his selfish interest.
The party said Tinubu had further demonstrated that he had nothing to offer towards the development of the country by travelling to Mecca, just to meet President Muhammadu Buhari and engage in gossips, invectives and diatribes against the PDP.
“It is atrocious that at the time other leaders are in the Holy Land offering prayers and supplications for our nation, Asiwaju Tinubu is in Mecca for photo-ops, playing dirty politics and hurling insults at other Nigerians just to curry relevance before President Buhari,” the party said in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, on Tuesday.
The party noted that nothing but sheer hypocrisy would push Tinubu to engage in unholy praises of a failed administration in a desperation to avert the purported threats by certain agents of the Buhari Presidency to expose him.
The statement read, “This is the same Asiwaju Tinubu, who, in January 2018, at the 15th annual Daily Trust Dialogue, berated the Buhari administration for its nepotism, incompetence, corrupt oil subsidy regime; blaming it for the high-level poverty in our country and counselled Nigerians to be guided by their conscience in electing leaders in the 2019 general elections.
“Asiwaju, in criticising the Buhari administration, held rightly that ‘too much political and economic power resides in the hands of too few. This result in a society described by too much of unemployment, inadequate infrastructure, too little food, yet too much poverty.’
“He then added correctly that under President Buhari, ‘rather than becoming a joyous nation, Nigeria has become a cruel playground where the fears and concerns of the average person get exploited but their interests never get promoted.’”
While lambasting Tinubu for making allusion to its determination to retrieve the mandate of its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, at the tribunal, the PDP added that no amount of blackmail could detract it from the resolve.
It advised Tinubu to caution himself, adding that Nigerians, including members of the APC had seen through his power-grabbing antics and were determined to give him the back seat treatment.