The All Progressives Congress in Ekiti State has lampooned the First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, for visiting the state to showcase her theatrics prowess instead of a more robust and issue-based electioneering to list her husband’s achievements in the state in the last four years and what his plans are for the state if he wins.
The APC also tasked Dame Jonathan to borrow from Mrs. Aisha Buhari, the wife of the presidential candidate of the APC, General Muhammadu Buhari, who has shown class and panache in her campaign engagements.
The party said Mrs. Buhari’s attitude gives hope to Nigerians for a serious and purposeful leadership that will take Nigeria back on the track of development.
In a statement by its Publicity Secretary, Taiwo Olatubosun, the party regretted that the First Lady only came to Ekiti State to entertain the indigenes as people without aspirations for good life and development.
Olatubosun said throughout the campaign programme, she created the impression that what Ekiti State people needed was entertainment and theatrics to quench their thirst for growth and development.
Noting that her speech lacked the grace of a First Lady, Olatubosun said: “Throughout her speech, she manifested an image of a village masquerade providing a momentary comic relief to a poverty-ravaged community not in a hurry for socio-economic salvation.
“You would have thought that the First Lady would list her husband’s achievements in Ekiti State and then give the people some hope that her husband would build upon those achievements, but she engaged in a duet with her host and soul mate, Governor Ayo Fayose, in an empty campaign comedy to a thoroughly dazed enlightened Ekiti people.
“It was a perfect duet by two comedians that one does not need any counsel that Nigeria must be rescued from the captivity of the costumed ‘people of power’ without responsibility.”
The APC spokesman berated Dame Jonathan for her relentless attacks on Buhari, saying her conduct betrayed a woman hit by failure of her husband’s mandate to govern Nigeria along the path of development but was now acting desperately in rail-roading Nigerians into accepting a visionless leadership as a fate that must be embraced.
His words: “She was consistently painting Buhari as a man that would herd Nigerians into jail without committing any crime whereas Buhari only insisted that criminals during his coming administration would go to jail. She said she was not ready to prepare food for (Governor Ayo) Fayose (of Ekiti State) in jail. Inadvertently, Mrs. Jonathan was telling Nigerians that Fayose is a candidate for the prison if Buhari wins.”
Olatubosun challenged the First Lady to tell Ekiti Stte people the benefits of SURE-P she flaunted at the rally, saying the programme was just a bazaar for a few selfish party leaders without any benefit for the entire citizenry.
He also faulted her claim that women were appointed into government positions in Ekiti State by Fayose, saying this was a clear case of falsehood, which had become synonymous with Jonathan’s administration.
“Fayose has a four-man cabinet running his government. Apart from the Secretary to the State Government, where are the other women Fayose has appointed? Mrs Jonathan only came to Ekiti to entertain in a political theatre full of deceits and false props constructed by Fayose for maximum personal profits,” Olatubosun explained.
Stressing that Ekiti State people had made up their minds to vote Buhari, he added that they had become wiser and would not vote a regime that did not hold any promise for their future.
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