APC, PDP presidential spokespersons trade words over candidates

Spokesperson of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidates, Festus Keyamo and Segun Sowunmi, yesterday made an acute criticism on the administrations of the incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari and erstwhile President Olusegun Obasanjo.

The duo, who appeared on Sunrise Daily, a programme on Channels Television, thoroughly criticised each other to present their candidacy in good light.

Specifically, Keyamo who is the campaign manager for Buhari, described the presidential candidate of PDP, Atiku Abubakar, as a “colossal failure” while in administration with former President Olusegun Obasanjo between 1999 and 2007.

Keyamo also urged Nigerians not to base Atiku’s pedigree on his achievements as a private businessman, but on his records as a government official.

He said: “I want everybody to get it clear that Atiku Abubakar cannot run on the promises on this whole thing about running a private business. He is not Donald Trump that came all the way from private business straight into the presidency of America. He has been vice president.

He claimed those records because he keeps saying ‘when we were in power’. So, if he wants to take the credit of that period, he also has to take the liability of that period.

But Sowunmi described the present administration under Buhari as having “zero integrity.”

He said: “The Buhari-led administration has zero integrity. They say one thing in the morning, they do another.

First, they said they don’t even know the meaning of subsidy. Right now, they cannot explain to us who is paying subsidy or who is appropriating it. Now, we are finding out that $35 billion is somewhere lost within NNPC.

“Worse is that they go all over the world shaming the whole country claiming that Nigeria is corrupt, and even applauding other nations who call us ‘fantastically corrupt’.

“What makes them totally incompetent and unacceptable is that in the past three years, none of their ministers has been due for a change. How can they rejig their cabinet when they don’t even know what they are doing themselves?”