APC Told To Replace Tinubu As 2023 Presidential Candidate Over Litany Of Gaffes

A call has gone out for the All Progressives Congress (APC) to replace its presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu with another person before the February 2023 elections.

The call was made on Sunday by the Special Assistant to the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar on Public Communications, Phrank Shaibu.

He observed that the recurring public gaffes by Tinubu show the former Lagos Governor is clearly not fit to be running for the presidency in 2023 as he has already become affected by old age.

Atiku’s aide added that Nigerians do not need a continuation of the APC in power because nothing good has come out from the party since it took over leadership in 2015.

Shaibu said Tinubu lacks credibility and does not look like somebody who is going to emerge as the Grand Commander of the Federal Republic (GCFR) as his continuous public blunders rather show him as a comedian.

He said in the statement titled: “Tinubu should be Grand Comedian of the Federal Republic that “Tinubu may be a successful politician whose lifetime ambition is to be President of Nigeria, but it takes more than being a politician to become Nigeria’s President. Among other things, it takes credibility. The fact that everything about Tinubu is shrouded in secrecy should tell us that the APC presidential candidate lacks the credibility to govern a country like Nigeria.

“But more importantly, with the disaster that the APC administration has turned out to be, it will be more catastrophic to have a Tinubu as his successor. Governing Nigeria is not all about identifying surrogates who will man critical political offices for future political gains. Nigeria needs a debonair, cerebral, healthy, and suave President — a man in the mould of Atiku Abubakar.”

The Gaffes Are Getting Too Much

Shaibu continued by saying the public gaffes by Tinubu are becoming too frequent and may just be pointers to his inability to lead Nigeria effectively.

“In his latest gaffe at the Lagos rally, he asked Nigerians to get their APV in order to vote for APC when even primary school children know that the PVC is the only item that admits a voter into a polling unit.

“If he is not saying that voter’s card has an expiration date, he is saying that young Nigerians are tweeting on WhatsApp or that 50 million youths should be recruited into the Nigerian Army and be fed with cassava in the morning, and ‘agbado’ in the night. How can you say Nigerians are tweeting on WhatsApp? Common, is that the kind of person we want to hand 21st Century Nigeria over to?

“Without mincing words, Tinubu’s gaffes already supply comedians, skit makers, meme-makers, and TikTokers with content. He is a self-writing joke and will make Nigeria a bye-word for scorn among the comity of nations, which is why he shouldn’t get close to power.

“Truth be told, old age is the most mis-recommending criterion against a Tinubu presidency. And examples abound to buttress this point. Just listen to any of his extempore speeches and what you find is a lack of coherence, logic and verve. It is for the purpose of unmasking the real Tinubu and exposing him for who he really is, that we have challenged the APC standard bearer to an hour-long television interview,” he said.

APC Can Not Fix APC

The Atiku aide continued by saying APC has failed Nigerians and the citizens of the country should ignore the ruling party’s entreaties to remain in power.

Instead of plotting how to retain power in 2023, Shabu said the ruling party should rather apologize to Nigerians.

He said: “Now they are selling a message of renewed hope. It is common knowledge that darkness cannot cure darkness and sickness cannot cure sickness. How can the APC be promising to fix problems exacerbated by the APC? This is balderdash.”

“If the APC are not keen on replacing this candidate, they should in the alternative apologize to all Nigerians for bringing them nothing but the suffering of unquantifiable proportion since 2015, and proceed to make a solemn pledge not to have anything to do with governance, especially with the February 25, the election is fast approaching.”

Stop Attacking Atiku

On Tinubu’s comment for Atiku to withdraw from the 2023 race, Shaibu said such a statement is offensive and reckless.

“I must confess that I consider the remarks credited to the APC presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Saturday, November 26, 2022, where he laboured, albeit unsuccessfully, to paint the PDP presidential candidate as ungrateful and over-ambitious as not only offensive but reckless,” Shaibu said.

Tinubu Should Be Investigated

Shaibu added in his statement that the background of Tinubu including his academic records are all plagued with controversy and Nigerians shouldn’t vote for such a person.

“To be sure, Nigerians believe that Tinubu should come in the open to effectively disclaim the allegation that his name as it appears on public documents is not his name; that the parents he claimed were not his; that the certificates he claimed to be his are not and that the schools he claimed to have attended didn’t know him.

“The issue of which schools he attended is already in the public domain as only a few months ago, he told the Independent National electoral commission that he didn’t attend primary and secondary schools. The former Lagos governor, however, claimed he had two degrees from two American universities, which he further stated had been stolen by unknown soldiers during the military junta of the 1990s!!

“The disclosures came in an affidavit submitted by Tinubu to the electoral office as part of his eligibility filings for the 2023 presidential elections.

“The documents released on Friday, June 24 2022, showed that the APC presidential flagbearer left the columns for his primary and secondary education unmarked. But he said he obtained a degree in business and administration in 1979, apparently referring to his previous claims of attending the Chicago State University.”

He added that Tinubu’s claim that “I went on self-exile from October 1994 to October 1998. When I returned, I discovered that all my property, including all the documents relating to my qualifications and my certificates in respect of paragraph three above, were looted by unknown persons.”