By Chuks Okocha
With continued spike in the Coronavirus pandemic, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) yesterday upbraided the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led federal government for poor coordination and management of the pandemic.
It also upbraided the presidency for seeking to transfer the brunt of its failures to articulate and coordinate an effective national response on COVID-19 pandemic on state governors, describing such as unpardonable manifestation of leadership failure.
The party in a statement by the National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, said that the Buhari Presidency’s decision to run to state governors for solution after it had badly muddled up the process, leading to confusion across the country and consequential spike in infection and fatality rates, was rather coming very late in the day.
The party urged Nigerians to recall how the PDP and other well-meaning Nigerians repeatedly counselled the Buhari Presidency to involve state governors, the private sector and critical stakeholders for an effective multi-sectoral and multilayered approach, to no avail.
According to PDP, “The Buhari Presidency rebuffed wise counsels and settled for a parochial response marred by corruption, nepotism, incompetence and narrow-minded politics, only to now turn to seek to transfer the brunt of its colossal failure to state governors.”
The PDP described the announcement by the National Coordinator of the failed Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, Dr. Sani Aliyu, that state governments should now start taking ownership of the response, as an acceptance of failure by President Buhari, who failed to lead from the front but abdicated the task to incompetent and narrow-minded officials.
The PDP noted that the poor handling of the COVID-19 response had further highlighted the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led Federal Government’s lack of capacity to manage important national issues.
PDP called Nigerians to note that the three states, where the Buhari-led Federal Government took up the management of the COVID-19 pandemic, namely; Abuja, Lagos and Ogun states, had recorded very high statistics in infection and fatality rates compared to states where it was not involved.
According to it, “This shows that had President Buhari involved the states and allowed for a multi-layered, people-based approach in the distribution of palliatives, development of therapeutics and implementation of protocols, the situation would have been better handled.
“Now that the Buhari Presidency has come to its wits end, our party urges governors elected on the platform of the PDP to assist their colleagues in the APC with information, strategies and expertise, for effective national response for the pandemic”, PDP stated. .
Furthermore, the PDP urged the Presidency and his PTF to do the nation a favour by taking accommodation in the backseat and allowing competent hands to manage the situation.
The party further urged the state governors to brace up to the occasion and rally the private sector for homegrown solutions, which the APC-led Federal Government had failed to achieve due to sheer incompetence and corruption.
The PDP therefore charged the Buhari Presidency to immediately give detailed account of all funds and other resources it claimed to have spent, particularly on palliatives; a scheme that have been exposed to be a huge scam.
