by Kolapo Olapoju
These are really confusing times, when all sorts of spurious accusations and blatant denials are the order of the day.
All Progressives Congress (APC) leader, Bola Tinubu and President Goodluck Jonathan are the actors in the latest episode of ‘accusation and denial’.
The APC National leader alleged that the President offered him the Vice President slot in a proposed Interim National Government.
Tinubu had in a statement by his media office on Thursday claimed that the recent attacks on his person were because he rejected the offer by Jonathan to serve as the Vice President in an ING.
Tinubu said the offer was to weaken the opposition party, and as such, he declined the offer.
However, President Jonathan spoke through his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Reuben Abati, describing Tinubu’s claim as absurd and ridiculous.
With the back and forth, it’s pretty difficult to tell which of them is telling the truth, considering the fact that scenarios like this have become a regular thing between the PDP and the opposition APC in recent time.
While you mull on that, read below the denial by the Presidency:
“If you de-construct the statement that purportedly emanated from the office of Asiwaju Tinubu, you will see again the absurd nature of it. The absolutely ridiculous nature of it in the sense that given the configuration of Nigeria, it is not likely, totally impossible to have an ING arrangement in which you will have a southerner as the President and then another southerner as Vice President.”
“It is absurd. It is not something that is likely to work given the nature of our politics. But the Tinubu camp putting out that statement, were so much in a hurry to engage in their usual game of deceiving the public about the current electoral process, that the emptiness, the hollowness, the shallowness of their proposition escaped them.”
Abati added that: “Another gimmick coming from a desperate political group seeing that defeat is steering them in the face and are resorting to greater desperation. But our appeal to Nigerians is that this country is greater than everyone’s ambition and at the end of the day what is important is Nigeria.”
