•Tinubu and PDP logo
The Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, yesterday said President Bola Tinubu will not resign under any guise.
He said the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governors should perish the thought of resignation by the president, reports The Nation.
The minister described the governors’ call as a distraction by those who should support the president.
He said President Tinubu is not overwhelmed by the challenges confronting the country.
The minister, who made the government’s position known in a statement in Abuja, said President Tinubu will “courageously continue to wrestle with the nation’s challenges and surmount them.”
The statement was signed by the Special Assistant (Media) to the Minister, Rabiu Ibrahim.
The statement reads: “The Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, notes the statement by the PDP Governors Forum, directing a call for resignation of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu GCFR.
“President Tinubu is not and will never be overwhelmed by the current challenges the country is facing.
“He will not abdicate his responsibilities. He will courageously continue to wrestle with the challenges and surmount them, laying a durable foundation for the new Nigeria that is emerging.
“He has also never shied away from acknowledging the pain of ongoing reforms, and has seized every opportunity to assure Nigerians that inside the pain of the reforms lie the seeds of lasting prosperity and national development.
“To the PDP Governors, let us reiterate: This is not the time for distraction. It is time instead for the rolling up of sleeves, to support and complement the hard work of the President and his administration.”
The minister faulted the PDP Governors for trying to use intimidation to achieve what their party failed to do through democratic means since 2015.”
It added:” The call is nothing but an attempt at distraction by people who should instead be busy supporting the President’s efforts at bringing economic relief to the Nigerian people.
“It is our considered view that the PDP and its governors should not be seeking, through the back door of intimidation, what they have consistently failed to achieve by democratic means, since 2015.
“Those who could not bring transformational change when they had a lengthy chance to, should not seek to interrupt or distract those who are busy at work on the presidential vision that Nigerians elected them to implement.”
Idris said the administration of President Tinubu was on course and PDP controlled states have been benefitting from the ongoing reforms.
The minister said the Tinubu administration has generously extended financial support to the state governments, regardless of partisan affiliation.
He added that the removal of the petrol subsidy—which, incidentally, was one of the main planks of the PDP presidential campaign—has swelled the revenues of the states, including the PDP states.
Idris urged the governor to be up and doing in their states, saying: “To whom more has been given, more is therefore expected.”
He said the federal government has not relented in tackling the challenges across the sectors.
Idris said: “The President and his administration recognise the unfinished business of revamping our national economy kickstarted by the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, through programmes focused on large-scale infrastructure, social welfare, prioritizing the equipping and welfare of the military and security agencies, and reclaiming Nigeria’s strategic place in the comity of nations.
“Boko Haram and its affiliates, on the ascendancy in 2014/2015, have since been decimated, and similar bold gains are now being made with bandits and other criminals.”
The minister said PDP and its governors should remove the moth in their eyes.
He pointed out that the All Progressives Congress (APC) government was still clearing the mess of the PDP administration in the country.
Idris stressed: “Nigerians have not forgotten that it was the APC administration that cleared several liabilities left behind by the PDP government, such as subsidy claims by oil marketers, Paris Club Refunds, unpaid pensions, gratuities, and salary arrears owed various categories of pensioners from liquidated and existing State-Owned Enterprises.
“Major oil sector reforms that the PDP touted for years but could not deliver – passage of the PIB, new refineries, as well as the revamp of existing ones, and so on – are the very real and continuing legacies of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
“All of these have been accomplished without access to the oil windfall that the PDP government enjoyed for much of the time that it was in power, and also against the backdrop of the most devastating global shock since the Second World War: the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“We must continue to state these facts so Nigerians will know where we are coming from, and appreciate what is being done in its full context.”
