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•Says it’s copy and paste, document filled with half-thoughts

•Nigerians have dismissed PDP as unserious, broken, says APC

Chuks Okocha and Adedayo Akinwale in Abuja

The Director of Strategic Communications of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential Campaign Council, Bashorun Dele Momodu,  has thrashed the manifesto of the the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, saying it was “copied notes” from the late Chief MKO Abiola’s Hope’93 manifesto.

Momodu, who is the Publisher of Ovation Magazine International, however, posited that, “The document is filled with half-thoughts, poor reasoning, and copied notes from Abiola’s ‘Hope ’93’ manifesto”.

But the ruling APC, in some sort of response, has said the PDP was unaware that Nigerians had since dismissed it as an unserious and broken opposition party.

Abiola was presumed to have won the 1993 presidential election on the platform of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), an election adjudged as the freest and fairest in the annals of Nigeria’s political process but was annulled by the military junta of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida.

But the Buhari administration had recognised Abiola’s victory, making June 12 Nigeria’s Democracy Day and honoured the family and his Vice-Presidential candidate, Babagana Kingibe, who is currently serving as Buhari’s Special Envoy with cabinet rank status to Chad and the Lake Chad Basin Region.

APC and its presidential candidate, Tinubu, had released the 80-page manifesto tagged: “Renewed Hope 2023” on October 21.

Thus, Momodu, in an article titled: “APC: Renewed hope or forlorn hope?” released on Sunday, criticised Tinubu’s manifesto as “an appropriation of MKO Abiola’s legacy” and pointed out the difference between Abiola and Tinubu, saying the latter’s presidential bid was a “forlorn hope”.

Momodu, who contested the party’s presidential primary with Atiku Abubakar, said the manifesto was “an insult to the sensibility and needs of Nigerians” and accused the authors of “copy and paste”.

According to him, “Like a crafty student trying to avoid being caught in the act of plagiarism, the authors of the document have tried to rewrite some unoriginal ideas. The authors of the document do not only offend Nigerians with their collection of cliches and pedestrian ideas but they offend, expose and indict the APC candidate, Chief Bola Tinubu.

“I urge you in the spirit of fairness to interrogate what the APC calls a manifesto. You will see that they are promising exactly what they have not been able to achieve in eight years.

“Chief Bola Tinubu is not new to Nigerian politics. It is sad that he allowed some people to copy and repackage, without tact or grace, the Abiola Hope ’93 manifesto and mixed it with the 2015 APC/Buhari manifesto for him.

“They even have the impudence to tag it ‘Renewed Hope’. Nigerians do not need a copy and paste manifesto. They want details and original ideas. The way this country is right now, offering the people empty promises would not take us forward.

“The question for every presidential candidate is how will you solve the problem? We all know what the problem is. Tell us how? For eight years, Bola Tinubu has projected himself as the power behind the throne.

“His party has failed to lead Nigeria forward. They must stop blaming the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). They must stop blaming the world and COVID 19. The duty of government is to provide leadership and solve problems. Leadership is about managing people and resources.

“Nigeria urgently requires a leader with exemplary capacity and ability to lead a nation in confusion with distinction and never with untested experimentation. We’ve already gone through calamitous experiments in the last eight years. The APC government is the only government that blames others and the past for its lack of innovation and creativity.

“I insist that the authors of the APC manifesto exposed and indicted both APC and Chief Bola Tinubu. The authors of the document, whoever they are, seem so disrespectful of Nigerians that they do not seem to care or know that Nigerians will ask where was Chief Bola Tinubu and his running mate when the current administration was getting things wrong with a similar game plan and manifesto?”

But the Director of Public Affairs and Chief Spokesperson of  Tinubu/Shettima Presidential Campaign Council, Festus Keyamo, in a statement yesterday said, it expected that its Action Plan would inspire other political parties, especially, the PDP to engage it constructively on the initiatives and programmes the ruling party intends to implement.

He said, “It appears the Peoples Democratic Party is unaware that Nigerians have since dismissed it as an unserious and broken opposition party. If nothing at all, its latest press release signed by Chief Dele Momodu attests to its crass unseriousness.

“Our expectation is that our Action Plan would inspire other political parties, especially, the intellectually bankrupt PDP, to engage us constructively on the initiatives and programmes we intend to implement.”

Keyamo said true to type, PDP has again reacted, without even reading the content on the document, adding that all they were interested in was the title of the message, not the quality of the ideas.

The APC noted that it was extremely amused, but not entirely shocked, saying, “This only demonstrated once again PDP’s incurable incapacity to act as a credible opposition to the ruling party,” noting that on the contrary, the five-point agenda of Atiku was nothing to write home about.

“Top on the list is his lip service to unify Nigeria. We can only laugh. This is a man that his party is torn between division and disarray. Till now, he is yet to fix it. What a failure! His 74-page campaign document has in it ongoing milestones of the President Muhammadu Buhari led administration.

“Dele Momodu should have rather stayed in his accustomed lane of praise-singing socialites and the likes instead of dabbling in the more demanding job of critiquing policy statements. It is clearly not his forte!

“The quality of his recent write-up is a testament that his team is not made up of experts in governance and policy formulation. He must have gathered his team of photographers and video editors to read through a document that is far beyond their tabloid-centred minds.”