President Muhammadu Buhari has described as of no substance, the endorsement of the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar by a section of the Igbo socio-cultural group, Ohanaeze Ndigbo.
The president made the remark on Friday at a meeting with a select group of South-East leaders at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.
He explained that the moment the “so-called resolution” was announced, he got calls from well-meaning leaders from the region asking him to disregard it as it was without any substance.
He said he was not surprised at the division within the group over the said support for Atiku.
His words: “From that moment, I knew that the resolution would not stand, and alas, there it was.”
He declared that his party, the All Progressives Congress, APC, had done a lot in solving the major problems of Nigeria which border on security, corruption and the economy.
“We have done so much. Given the chance, we will do more. Given every chance, we will tell Nigerians where we were in 2015 and what we have achieved up to now.
“We will not get tired of speaking about the golden opportunity Nigeria lost during 16 years of the PDP. We earned money, which we didn’t use,” he said.
“The state of infrastructure we inherited was terrible – no roads, the railway was killed and power. They lacked conscience because anybody with conscience will not do what they did. We will report them to Nigerians. Let anybody lead this country but not the PDP. They were so reckless with the resources of the country,” the President said.
“If you ruin the economy, send your children abroad to get education, won’t they come back?” he asked, adding: “I said it 30 years ago that this is the only country we have. We must stay here and salvage it together.”
The leaders of the delegation, Engineer Emeka Ekwuosa and the National Chairman of the United Progressive Party (UPP), Chief Chekwas Okorie, informed President Buhari that the Igbos and South-easterners generally understood the good things he was doing for Nigeria which they said, had unfortunately been misunderstood.
They promised to mobilise support for him in the south-east, saying that his re-election would be a national consensus.
