Politics

Buhari’s Cabinet Cancerous, Chaotic — PDP

Published

5 years ago

May 27, 2020

The Peoples Democratic Party has alleged that the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Executive Council has become cancerous, disorganized, chaotic, and incapable of driving an organized, result-oriented system and as such should be disbanded.

The party, in a statement yesterday by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, said its position was predicated on the alleged degenerated hostilities among officials in the Buhari Presidency, including presidential aides, ministers and heads of agencies. The party said the alleged hostilities had further “exposed a scandalous breakdown” of the administration’s central command system. The PDP alleged the situation was a mark of failure by the Presidency and the All Progressives Congress to provide organized leadership for the nation.

“This is indeed shocking that the acrimony had sunk to a situation where the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, reportedly evicted the staff of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission from their allocated office, with guns, while the Chairman of the Commission, Hon. Abike Dabiri, was on official assignment with the President.

“Currently, the newly appointed Chief of Staff to the President, Prof. Ibrahim Gambari and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, are said to be at each other’s throat, with the SGF reportedly querying the decision of the President to sack the former Director of the Transmission Company of Nigeria, Mr. Usman Mohammed. “The situation had degenerated into serious confusion in the federal executive.

“Nigerians can recall the bitter wrangling, wherein the National Security Adviser, Maj. Gen Babagana Monguno, earlier this year, alerted that presidential responsibilities, including presiding over sensitive security matters, have been hijacked by late Chief of Staff, Malam Abba Kyari, thereby frustrating the fight against insurgency and acts of violence ravaging our country.

“Furthermore, the power sector is still under the stress of squabbling between the SGF and the Minister of Power, Sale Mamman, with the SGF, reinstating some officials who were sacked by the minister in December last year.

“It is sad that presidential hostilities had resulted in escalated cases of internal sabotage including the leakage of sensitive documents as exposed by the Head of Service, Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan and recently witnessed in the embarrassing leakage of President Buhari’s draft COVID-19 speech,” the PDP said.

The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, when contacted for a reaction, directed our State House correspondent to contact the APC National Secretariat for a reaction.

However, APC National Publicity Secretary, Lanre Issa-Onilu, said the ruling party did not care about the PDP’s accusation. Issa-Onilu, in a telephone chat with one of our reporters, said: “PDP can go ahead to release whatever statement they want. We don’t care about it and we’re not responding.”