PDP flays alleged failure to ‘positively’ engage British PM

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) yesterday decried what it called “President Muhammadu Buhari’s inability to productively engage British Prime Minister Theresa May.”

A development, the party claimed, directly bungled Nigeria’s opportunity to draw maximum economic dividends from her visit.

In a statement by its national publicity secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, PDP expressed deep concerns “that President Buhari could not even assemble a competent economic team to engage the British leader and has also not considered it expedient to muster a team for a strategic engagement with German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who is billed to commence a state visit to our nation.”

The statement reads in part: “It is indeed unfortunate and completely unpatriotic that instead of thinking of ways to draw economic dividends from the important state visits, President Buhari is rather more interested in using them to secure international endorsements for his selfish re-election bid.

“We all saw a British Prime Minister who was favourably disposed to a healthy and productive engagement on critical areas of our economy and how President Buhari and his officials, out of sheer incompetence, failed to seize the opportunity for the benefit of our nation.

“Instead, the Buhari presidency was more interested in photo-ops and diplomatic niceties perhaps to score cheap political points, indicative of how our presidency has diminished in the last three years.”

It added: “The robust and very fruitful engagement the British leader later had with Kenyan president, Uhuru Kenyatta, shows how low the standard of national leadership has fallen in our country under the Buhari presidency.

“The president should immediately end this lethargy and seek help in setting up a team comprising very competent and knowledgeable hands to interface with the German chancellor and her team so that Nigeria will benefit from her visit.

“Finally, we caution President Buhari not to seek to use the visit of the German leader for another lame attempt at international endorsement, which has continued to elude him, while attracting embarrassing backlashes to the nation.”