By Chimezie Godfrey
The Presidency has dismissed allegations by opposition politicians that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is undermining Nigeria’s multi-party democracy, describing the claims as a desperate attempt to find scapegoats for political failure.
In a statement issued on Sunday, Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, said the opposition figures were “engaging in subterfuge and an empty search for scapegoats.”
According to him, “Nigeria’s so-called opposition politicians, comprising some of those left in a dying political party and a sprinkling of some failed political office aspirants regrouping in a platform struggling to find its bearings, are amusing lots.”
Onanuga said the opposition was merely blowing hot air and seeking cheap political gains by confusing the polity.
Reacting to claims that democracy was under threat because politicians were defecting to the All Progressives Congress (APC), he said the constitution guaranteed freedom of association.
“None of the people who joined the governing APC was pressured to do so. They all did so of their own free will, motivated by the noticeable gains of President Bola Tinubu’s reform programme,” he said.
He questioned whether Nigeria’s democracy was threatened when politicians moved en masse to the Peoples Democratic Party between 2000 and 2015.
On the allegations of EFCC “weaponisation,” Onanuga said the anti-graft agency remained independent.
“President Tinubu does not issue directives to any anti-corruption agency on whom to investigate, arrest, or prosecute,” he stated.
He added that those with cases before the EFCC should defend themselves if they were clean, noting that “no one is above the law.”
The presidential spokesman said allegations against the administration were distractions by politicians “running short of campaign issues” against the APC.