Ex-minister accuses PDP govs, ministers of abandoning president to campaign alone

Leave Buhari alone, face issue-based campaign, he tells party

By Henry Umoru

ABUJA—AHEAD of the presidential and general elections fixed for March 28 and April 11 respectively, former Minister of State for Education, Kenneth Gbagi yesterday accused the ministers, heads of Parastatals and aides of President Goodluck Jonathan of leaving the campaigns for the President alone to handle, even as he said that only God would help the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP to win the election.

He said, “What I am saying is that God is a God of miracle, He can do miracle.”

Speaking with Vanguard yesterday at his Asokoro residence, Gbagi also alleged that governors of the PDP that cut across the country were not working in tandem with President Jonathan, just as he urged the ruling party to desist from personal attack on the Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, General Muhammadu Buhari, retd and face issue-based campaigns if the PDP must win the polls.

He said, “The governors as it were are not with Mr President, I repeat, the supposed governors are not with Mr President. You read a scoop two days ago that seven governors defecting. Even if they don’t physically defect, their body language and instructions to their followers are different from what we are seeing in the media. We need to move drastically and quickly so that we do not have a situation where we are seated and we are captured. Governors across Nigeria are not with the President.”

President Jonathan

The 2014 Delta State governorship aspirant, who asked those attacking the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega to stop that, stressed that fighting the INEC boss was not necessary and justifiable, but those who worked to win would be declared the winners and those who did not, would be declared the loser of the election.

Gbagi, who accused the PDP of not doing enough in the area of selling the party, and the achievements of the present administration to Nigerians when it had the opportunity to do that, warned against over heating the polity, adding that if PDP members, leaders, stakeholders had put in their resources, energy and time to campaign the way the President did , it would have been a game sealed for PDP.

He said, “I am taken aback largely. You are here with us when we did the election in 2011 and we were at the forefront. I am disappointed that the entire campaign situation has been left alone to the President largely.

I have sojourned the nook and crannies of Abuja and the north in the last few days and my conclusion is that; where are the ministers, where are the DGs, where are the Permanent Secretaries, where are the agencies of government. As it were, all have been left in the hands of Mr President to do his job all by himself.

“I personally sat and held Buhari spellbound in 2011 election and we made slide successes. I don’t see anybody, let all the ministers come out and begin to pubic individually what they have done in their ministry with what they were given and how they spent the money and leave accusing Buhari as a person but tackle the issue of politics.”