By Omeiza Ajayi

Corruption and integrity in leadership position would be two issues that Nigerians would have to consider as they head to the polls next month, at least, in the estimation of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC.

APC

From President Muhammadu Buhari to the least person in the party, what differentiates Buhari from other candidates is integrity. The APC believes that Buhari comes to politics with a level of integrity that is yet unmatched.

And so it was, last week, when Vice President Yemi Osinbajo attended a Roundtable and Mentorship Programme on Micro, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises, MSME, in Ado Ekiti, Ekiti State capital.

Speaking at the event, Osinbajo told Nigerians not to allow the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, return to power, saying the motive behind the party’s desperation to come back to office at the federal level is to re-loot the nation.

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He said; “Many of our leaders are not responsible, so Nigeria needs a honest man to lead the people and President Buhari is doing just that. Don’t allow anybody to deceive you.   President Buhari is an honest man. Our problem in this country is that many of our leaders are stealing our money, so you must disallow them from coming to power again.

“Rather than stealing money, President Buhari is doing more in strengthening the youths through N-Power, TraderMoni, School Feeding Programme, Lagos-Kano rail line, Calabar—Asaba-Abuja Railway line, Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, among others. All these are meant to benefit Nigerian masses.

“As we speak, 500,000 Nigerians are benefiting from N-Power, but we are not going to stop at that. Soon, the number will increase.

“The Next Level of our government is to give loans to women, youths and other sectors through the special banks that are underway to make lives easy for the masses.”

Speaking at another event, the APC National Chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, said the fact remained that nobody had ever called Buhari a thief, expressing delight that the coming elections would be about character and not ethnicity or religion.

“The issue of North and South responsible for Buhari retaining the key support in the North while the South auspiciously voted based on the son-of-the-soil tag… This time, ethnicity will be a non-issue because Buhari and the other presidential candidate (Abubakar Atiku of the PDP) are from the same region. The people are therefore going to look at character.

“Nobody has ever said Buhari is a thief. But who said the other person is a thief? It was his boss (former President Obasanjo). When you are working with me and I say you are a thief, God will punish me if I support you. And when you are confused because your supply line has been chopped off and then you enter into a new deal, you now turned around to support the same person, that God that you called with your name to punish you if you support the person is about to go to work. And He will go to work in February and He will punish him thoroughly and the person he is supporting, in favour of Nigerians”, he stated.

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At a rally in Yola, the Director General of the Muhammadu Buhari Presidential Campaign Council, Rotimi Amaechi, also spoke in the same vein, saying were Nigerians to place the PDP and APC on a competitive index, the only place the opposition party would defeat the ruling party would be in corruption.

“The only way we can show these men that we are serious is not to allow them come back because if they come back, they will use four years to recoup what they have lost. They will do what our parents used to teach us while we were kids, ‘do not talk while you are eating’. If you disturb them, they will tell you they are eating. They will be busy eating from what is left, all the struggles of Buhari is what they would squander. And they will do that in four years. After that, they will ask for another four years.

“The National Chairman of PDP, Secondus, had said they were sorry for what they had done but a thief is a thief; they will never change.

“This election is between two parties that have been in power. We challenge PDP to an open debate where the masses will be present. Let them show their scorecard and we will show our own too. The only place they will beat us is in corruption. You know before, when you attend rallies, they will give you money and you will not ask them where the money was coming from. When they give you N5, 000, they will go and take N5 billion.

“Please do not go and sleep. There is what they call apathy. Avoid apathy. Do not just assume that we have won. On February 16, come out with your PVCs and vote APC. We want to beat PDP mercilessly. You have to go out and vote. When you vote, do not leave. PDP people are magicians, because if you go, two thousand would become two million. You know I was in PDP, so I know this. Stay there and vote. When they announce the results, you can go home”.