Tinubu launches indirect attack on Buhari

SEVERAL Nigerians were thrown into dumfounding consternation when the national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, opened his salvo indirectly on the Minister of Petroleum, who virtually all stakeholders in the Nigerian project believe to be President Muhammadu Buhari. The former Governor of Lagos State was so tactical to overtly direct his offensive on the Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, over the perennial scarcity of petrol in the country which has persisted since the ending of 2015.

Populist opinions sway toward the belief that the bunch of brooms of the APC is beginning to disperse and the party leaders are now using any slight opportunity hit at the leaders in government whose performances have thrown the country into unmitigated economic and social crises.

Kachikwu had in a media chat jokingly said he is not a magician in the handling of the petrol scarcity crisis, promising that the scarcity will be faced out in May.

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Tinubu, thereafter, in a statement titled: “Kachikwu needs to know that respect and good performance will do what magic cannot,” lampooned the Minister that his comment is unbecoming of a “member of this progressive government.” He felt that Kachikwu talked down on those he was meant to serve. “Kachikwu’s flippancy was out-of-line. He was basically telling Nigerians that they should be lucky that they are getting the inadequate supply they now suffer and that they should just be quiet and endure the shortage for several weeks more,” Tinubu declared.

Many Nigerians are of the belief that Tinubu intends to sacrifice Kachikwu, who is not a partisan politician or an APC member but a technocrat, on the altar of the power conflict in the party, which reflected in his being kept in the outskirt of patronage in both political appointments and contracts considerations by the APC-federal government.

Like Chinua Achebe, it appears ‘things are falling apart in APC, and the centre may not hold in the future’.