The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has lambasted President Muhammadu Buhari over his response to criticisms by former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
PDP said “Buhari should stop acting like a coward.”
Obasanjo had on Sunday claimed that Buhari, among other things, was desperate for self-succession.
The former President, who compared Buhari’s regime to Abacha era, hinted on plans to rig the 2019 general elections.
Responding, Buhari’s spokesperson, Garba Shehu said “Our first message to the former President is that he needs a good doctor for good treatment and to say to him, “Get well soon.”
However, PDP faulted the response of the President, saying such was appalling.
In a statement signed by its spokesperson, Kola Ologbondiyan, on Monday, PDP said in “approving Garba, to cast aspersions and insult on a former President, President Buhari was setting a very bad example to younger Nigerians by fouling our national values and heritage of our elders.”
The statement titled: “Obj: Stop Acting Like a Coward,” reads: “In approving his media aide, Mallam Shehu Garba, to cast aspersions and haul insult on a former President, President Buhari is setting a very bad example to younger Nigerians by fouling our national values and heritage of esteeming our elders and leaders; a seed, which may also haunt him in the future.
“Nigerians were appalled that President Buhari, whose state of health has been accommodated by the nation, would turn around to make baseless and unsubstantiated negative assertions on the health of another leader.
“President Buhari may have seen how Nigerians have been registering their disappointment on his resort to personal attacks on former President Obasanjo, instead responding to the germane issues raised by the former President.
“Nigerians have weighed all the concerns by former President Obasanjo, particularly the manifest desperation by the Buhari Presidency to undermine our democratic institutions, including the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the judiciary and the legislature as well as plots to use security forces to subvert the will of the people at the polls.
“Instead of attacking former President Obasanjo, President Buhari should have been sobered and retrace his steps in the interest of the corporate existence of our country which he is pushing to the precipice.”
The PDP urged President Buhari to note that his “resort to personal attacks on the critics of his administration cannot distract Nigerians from their resolve to rescue our nation from the stranglehold of his administration by voting him out of office, come February 16, 2019.”