Following Senate Minority Leader, Enyinnaya Abaribe’s call on President Muhammadu Buhari to resign as Nigeria’s president, Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity quickly released a statement.
TheNewsGuru.com (TNG) recalls Senator Abaribe had during plenary on Wednesday called on President Buhari to resign over the failure of his government to tackle security challenges confronting the country.
Also recall we had earlier reported what every lawmaker said after Abaribe called for Buhari’s resignation as Senate debated insecurity in the country, but the full text of Abaribe’s comments on the floor of the Senate did not follow the earlier report.
To fully understand the takeaways from Garba Shehu’s urgent press statement in reaction to Senator Abaribe’s comments then, it is important to read the Senate Minority Leader’s comments as represented below.
“When I was coming, I saw a newspaper headline of THISDAY, the commander-in-chief expresses shock at the level of violent crime. In other words Mr president was expressing surprise, but, according to our rules – Order 53(13), I will not go into that but I can only say in pidgin English ‘this surprise, surprise me’.
“I want to say, Mr President, if you didn’t insist that we will not be partisan I’d have called out the presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina, who, when the CAN leaders complained about the killings of a priest, he turned around and said CAN was acting like a political party.
“Now that we are talking about it here, let me hear him say that all of us are acting like a political party when many are complaining about these incessant deaths in this country.
“Boko Haram has been defeated, Nigeria is now safer, everything that was being done to make sure that the hard work that was supposed to be done in securing Nigeria was not done because certain people did not do their work but preferred to cover the eyes of Nigerians with propaganda and trying to find all these excuses for non-performance, have now come to stare us in the face.
“Nigeria did not elect the IGP, we did not elect the chief of staff, we did not elect the joint-chiefs or national security adviser. We elected the government of APC in 2015 and re-elected them in 2019. The reason we re-elected them is that they continued to tell us that they had the key to security.
“When you want to deal with a matter, you go to the head, so we will go to government and ask this government to resign because they can no longer do anything.
“Let me remind you once again that Nigerians voted for APC in 2015 and because they saw improvement in their lives they voted APC again in 2019.
“I don’t want to be partisan and advise against hate speech. Government even said if ‘we don’t perform, stone us’, we are going with the stones to stone them now”.
The takeaways from Garba Shehu’s urgent press statement, therefore follow next:
A ‘gbas gbos’ statement
They say, “the best form of defence is to attack”, and Garba Shehu brought it to bear in his statement in response to Senator Abaribe call for Buhari to resign. In efforts to defend the Buhari’s administration, Garba Shehu literally attacked Abaribe, dishing out gbas gbos.
Not so many Nigerians would have known that it was Senator Abaribe that signed as surety for the release of Nnamdi Kanu, who Garba Shehu said is presently in thin air.
“If a leader like President Buhari needs to resign, there are millions of other Nigerians who need to resign, including Senator Abaribe who unlocked the door to enable the escape of traitorous and treasonable suspects.
“He signed the bond for the court to release Nnamdi Kanu on bail, from which moment the suspect disappeared into the thin air,” Garba Shehu stated.
The world is now in the know, not just Nigerians only, with Garba Shehu’s release, that Abaribe is surety for Kanu’s release. He sure did that to an effect, but did he score any points for that? He might just have let Biafra cessationists know the saviour of their hero, giving more impetus.
Presidency is vexed
The tone of the press statement, though written, is very loud and clear, and no doubt, indicated that the presidency is particularly vexed by Senator Abaribe’s comments on the floor of the Senate on Wednesday.
Garba Shehu referred to Abaribe as “some character” and “arm chair critic” in continuation of the gbas gbos, an indication of which that the presidency is really vexed.
With this vexation, the presidency might commence opening cans of worms on Abaribe with the view to nail him down
“Senator Abaribe has failed repeated deadlines to return Kanu to the court for trial, yet he has the effrontery with which to accuse someone of failing to the bidding of the law.
“This is a man who should have replaced the suspects he failed to produce in the correctional facility,” the Buhari’s aide stated.
That Garba Shehu said this, rings a lot of bells that even the deaf could hear the tinkling. But the question to ask is if the presidency would summon up bravery to pursue Abaribe to a corner, and eventually catch him.
Blame game continues
It is amazing that till date, the guys in the presidency are still trading blame games. One would have thought Nigerians are already overwhelmed by this antic, but not the guys in the presidency.
Oh! No! Abaribe is a member of the Peoples’ Democracy Party (PDP). Or, didn’t the Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, and the Deputy, Ovie Omo-Agege, both of the APC, condemned the Buhari’s administration for failing to tame insecurity in the country?
Like Abaribe said, “We elected the government of APC in 2015 and re-elected them in 2019. The reason we re-elected them is that they continued to tell us that they had the key to security”.
But Garba Shehu had a different narrative: “Abaribe’s party raped the nation and left it collapsing in 2015 and President Buhari is fixing things up all the years he is in office”.
He went further to state: “President Buhari is working hard to keep Nigeria and Nigerians out of the harm terrorists have unleashed in the entire Sahel and Sub-Saharan Africa with the support of Nigerians and our foreign friends, he is going to finish off these terrorists. He alone can do it”.
Garba Shehu wants us to believe “na Buhari dey run am”, yet nothing changes, than the disabusing of the mind of Nigerians about the security situation in the country, and the continuous blame game that takes different dimensions every time there is national concern.
Presidency becoming very impatient
The haste with which the presidency reacts to public comments does not alarm them, but it is an indicator of something that underrates the Buhari’s administration. One would have thought that the channel of communication should be the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, but no, every tom, dick and harry in the presidency is the mouthpiece to the government.
From the hasty reaction of Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami to Amotekun, the regional security outfit that cropped up for the same sake of insecurity across the country, to this yet again hasty response by Garba Shehu, it becomes very obvious that the patience of this government is thinning out.
It is hoped that the government of the day has not entered into panic mode.
Read below Garba Shehu’s full statement in reaction to Senator Abaribe’s comments on the floor of the Senate:
STATE HOUSE PRESS RELEASE
SENATOR ABARIBE’S CALL ON PRESIDENT BUHARI TO RESIGN IS FOOLISH
President Buhari to resign on what basis?
Just because some characters think that President Buhari should resign, then they expect him to quit. That call does not represent the opinion of the country. This is the opinion of an arm chair critic, known for making stray comments.
If a leader like President Buhari needs to resign, there are millions of other Nigerians who need to resign, including Senator Abaribe who unlocked the door to enable the escape of traitorous and treasonable suspects.
He signed the bond for the court to release Nnamdi Kanu on bail, from which moment the suspect disappeared into the thin air. Senator Abaribe has failed repeated deadlines to return Kanu to the court for trial, yet he has the effrontery with which to accuse someone of failing to the bidding of the law.
This is a man who should have replaced the suspects he failed to produce in the correctional facility.
Abaribe’s party raped the nation and left it collapsing in 2015 and President Buhari is fixing things up all the years he is in office.
President Buhari is working hard to keep Nigeria and Nigerians out of the harm terrorists have unleashed in the entire Sahel and Sub-Saharan Africa with the support of Nigerians and our foreign friends, he is going to finish off these terrorists. He alone can do it.
Garba Shehu
Senior Special Assistant to the President
Media & Publicity
January 29, 2020
The moment Senator Abaribe called for President Buhari's 'head' pic.twitter.com/5lNtrV9rBa
— Oyibo of Abuja (@oyiboediri) January 29, 2020