APC secretary tackles Atiku, Amaechi, Melaye over subsidy removal

From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja

The National Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Ajibola Basiru, has chided the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar; his running mate, Chibuike Amaechi over fuel subsidy removal.

Basiru spoke when the ruling party’s national leadership received ADC legislative candidates from the northern region that sacrificed their political ambitions to join and drum support for the re-election of President Bola Tinubu for next year’s presidential election.

Attacking Atiku, Basiru said that he should bury his head in shame, having failed the country when he headed the privatisation of Nigeria’s critical asset, just as he described Amaechi as irresponsible for spending millions of Naira to bury his mother, he claimed he has no money for her medication.

The ruling party’s chief scribe also argued that regardless of the impression by many, the truth is that the country has returned to self sufficiency with the removal of fuel subsidy, dismissing the impression that the president is under pressure to return fuel subsidy.

He further argued that there is difference between price modulation and fuel subsidy, stressing that the era of state governments borrowing to pay salaries of workers and pensioners and prosecuting infrastructural projects are over.

While attacking the ADC chieftains, Basiru, said: “When you see people trying to unnecessarily create division where there is none, then you ask whether the ambition is really worth the whole process.

“In the past four weeks, the kind of utterances by people aspiring to lead Nigeria will make one wonder whether it is just about delivering Nigerian people or pursuing inordinate ambition?

“I heard Rotimi Amaechi saying that we should not have done a seaport in Ogun State because we are only doing a seaport in Ogun State because the president wants to make money from it.

“We also see a very absurd position from somebody who has served as a tutor, who, from 1999 until 2023, has not done any work except being serviced by Nigeria, saying that he did not have money to buy drugs for his mother and yet have millions of naira to do burial for his mother. You can see that such irresponsible people have no business getting close to the corridors of power.”