Buratai: Pro democracy group slams PDP over call for probe

…says party afraid of 2023 elections.

A group, the National Democratic Front (NDF), has berated the main opposition party in the country, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) for “weaponizing” fake news.

The group which was reacting to the latest allegations by the PDP that the N1.85 billion recovered by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) at a property in Abuja belonged to Nigeria’s Ambassador to Benin Republic and former Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Amb. Tukur Buratai, said the constant launching of fake news by the PDP shows that the party was afraid of the 2023 elections.

NDF in a statement issued on Monday in Abuja by its Secretary General, Dr. Bolaji Abdulkadir, said Ambassador Buratai, “through his lawyers and aides has unequivocally distanced himself from the recovered money and cars while the ICPC had also made it clear that the Ambassador was not a person of interest in its investigation that has already apprehended the Managing Director of K Salam Construction Company Nigeria Limited, Mr. Kabiru Salau, whose company is a military contractor.”

The statement said, “The anti-graft agency had further clarified the cash and assets it recovered from the said property amounted to N267.43 million and not N1.85 billion, which leaves one wondering if the PDP is in touch with reality or rather absorbed in believing the fake news it is attempting to feed Nigerians.”

It described the statement by PDP’s National Publicity Secretary, Debo Ologunagba, that linked Ambassador Buratai to the phantom N1.85 recovered funds as “so incoherent and disjointed”, stressing that “it was apparent the so-called opposition party has lost essence and sense of direction and only now feeds on fake news to justify its existence.”

“While it attempted to paint the outstanding former COAS as a corrupt person, PDP’s tenuous attempt to string together unrelated variables and create a nexus to the 2023 general elections showed that the party fears the trouncing awaiting it at the polls hence the unreasonable fear that has left it grasping at straws in a bid to assemble the excuses it would give for being rejected by Nigerians yet again. Rather than maligning the personality of persons that have sacrificed for the country, the PDP should direct its efforts at discussing issues since this is the only way political parties can pitch themselves to Nigerians,” the statement added.

NDF advised PDP to stop projecting its warped values on other political parties and public office holders since the “fake crime” it is accusing Ambassador Buratai of fits into the pattern of the looting that the party used to destroy Nigeria and precipitate the security crisis that the government of President Muhammadu Buhari has grappled with.

The group maintained that the current insecurity in the country was as a result of PDP’s years of misrule manifested under the present government, and “does not in any way absolve the party of responsibility for what it did to Nigeria.”

It further urged the PDP to “seek forgiveness from Nigerians and atone for its sins against the country in the hope that its members would one day be found worthy of being rehabilitated and reintegrated into mainstream politics and governance, which Nigerians presently think the party is unfit for,” stressing that “dishing out fake news about Ambassador Buratai and the incumbent government would only deepen the odiousness in which citizens hold the party owing to the magnitude of perversions its members committed in the office while the party held sway.”