NEWS LEVERAGE

Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the 2023 Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party PDP has blamed President Bola Tinubu of the chaos that resulted in his declaration of a State of Emergency in Rivers State which he said reeks of political manipulation.

Speaking shortly after the announcement on Tuesday, Mr Atiku stated that President Tinubu has had a vested partisan interest in the State and so failed to resolve the issues that led to the chaos.

Pointing out years of progress made in the Niger Delta region, Atiku stated that it is disgraceful that under the watch of President Tinubu, the region regressed to chaos and disaster.

He wrote;

The declaration of a state of emergency in Rivers State reeks of political manipulation and outright bad faith.

Anyone paying attention to the unfolding crisis knows that Bola Tinubu has been a vested partisan actor in the political turmoil engulfing Rivers. His blatant refusal — or calculated negligence — in preventing this escalation is nothing short of disgraceful.

Beyond the political scheming in Rivers, the brazen security breaches that led to the condemnable destruction of national infrastructure in the state land squarely on the President’s desk.

Tinubu cannot evade responsibility for the chaos his administration has either enabled or failed to prevent.

It is an unforgivable failure that under Tinubu’s watch, the Niger Delta has been thrown back into an era of violent unrest and instability — undoing the hard-won peace secured by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua. Years of progress have been recklessly erased in pursuit of selfish political calculations.

If federal infrastructure in Rivers has been compromised, the President bears full responsibility. Punishing the people of Rivers State just to serve the political gamesmanship between the governor and Tinubu’s enablers in the federal government is nothing less than an assault on democracy and must be condemned in the strongest terms. -AA