The political romance between President Muhammadu Buhari and the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Chief Bola Ahmed Tinubu, which has been rekindled by the 2019 presidential election, waxed stronger yesterday when both men in separate speeches assured Nigerians that the country was being rescued from the wreckage of past administrations.
Buhari, who is in Lagos for a two-day official visit, spoke at the 10th Bola Tinubu Colloquium held in Nigeria’s commercial capital to mark the APC leader’s 66th birthday.
Buhari at the event, restated his commitment to implementing people-oriented programmes, saying: “Our goal is to bring everybody together for mutually beneficial ethnic, economic, social, religion, political and cultural relationships.
“We are determined to invest in people because we depend on people to govern.”
Buhari, who also commissioned the Ikeja Bus Terminal in Lagos designed to handle 200,000 passengers daily, said his administration would continue to invest in social programmes, including school feeding and agriculture.
He said: “We have set Nigeria on an irreversible path of growth and development. We are resolute to uplift our people and make Nigeria a better place.”
The president described Tinubu as his friend saying, he was happy to be in Lagos “to celebrate the birthday of my friend and political partner”.
According to him, Tinubu is a well-known political strategist who has elevated politics above self.
He said: “I have come to see him as a man who cares about people, who is a fountain of ideas, for the common good of the common man and woman. He has played an appreciative contribution to Nigeria and Africa’s progress.
“We seek a change in the ways and means of our collective existence. We seek to construct a nation where people are no longer ruled by whims, but according to the law and for the betterment of the people.
“We seek to replace corruption with correctness, insecurity with safety, and poverty with prosperity.”
The president called on Nigerians to join him to celebrate “Asiwaju”, a man whom he said was widely known as a political strategist, a caregiver and a man with a vision.
Also speaking at the colloquium attended by several APC governors, party stalwarts, officials from the federal and Lagos State governments and captains of industry, Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo said the administration would not stop talking about the corruption perpetrated by the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), wondering why the party does not want people to “talk about the monumental corruption it inflicted on Nigeria”.
According to him, “Upon all I had seen in government in the past three years, the corruption of the five years of the Jonathan government is what destroyed the Nigerian economy.”
He insisted that the money withdrawn from the treasury before the election could have been used to develop infrastructure across the country.
Osinbajo said there was no country in the world that would allow its resources to be plundered in the way Nigeria’s resources were looted and shared and was still expected to be economically viable.
“Every time we talk about corruption, our opponents say don’t talk about it. Just do your own. But we must talk about it. The reason why we must talk about it is because we must let our people know that we can’t afford to go this way again.
“Never again should we allow a system where people take the resources of this country and steal the resources, use the resources against the people and at the same time they want to continue to rule the people.
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