Patience Jonathan, an embarrassment to Nigeria, says APC

The All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Organisation (APCPCO) has described the wife of the President, Dame Patience Jonathan, as “an incredibly crude woman” but thanked Nigerians for putting up with her.
The APCPCO said in a statement on Wednesday in Abuja that it is not only insulting for Mrs Jonathan to describe the presidential candidate of APC, General Muhammadu Buhari as “brain-dead,” it is also demeaning of her status as the First Lady.
Consequently, President Goodluck Jonathan was urged to call his wife to order, according to the statement signed by the Director of Media and Publicity of APCPCO, Mallam Garba Shehu.
Shehu observed that it was discourteous and inexcusable for a wife of any president with a modicum of decency to make such a false and infantile pronouncement about the health status of another man on account of politics.
The APCPCO recalls that in recent time, Mrs Jonathan had made statements invoking violence like she did in Calabar over the weekend when she urged PDP supporters to “stone” all those canvassing for change.
Shehu said that it was below the standard of the wife of a president to stoop so low to call for violent attacks against members of the opposition.
The statement noted that while a good number of Nigerians are not taken by surprise by Mrs. Jonathan’s recent incredulous pronouncements, it is important for her husband to put her in bridles in the spirit of the Abuja Peace Accord.
The APCPCO similarly observed that much as indecent and disgraceful the outbursts of Mrs. Jonathan was in attempting to pull the wool over the eyes of Nigerians about her husband’s incompetence to lead the country, it is typical of the PDP’s modus operandi to confuse Nigerians with mundane issues instead of the issues of corruption, for which her husband has achieved an unbeaten record; his appalling lack capacity to secure life and property of citizens and a glaring incompetence in dealing with the challenges facing the economy.
In a related development, the APCPCO condemned Jonathan’s desperate tactics of using religion to gain sympathy and remain in office at all costs.
A statement by Shehu said it is surprising why the President has turned worship centres into platforms for making official statements or announcing government policies.
He said this absurdity defies the norms of government practices, and that the President is deliberately doing so “in the belief that the manipulation of religious sentiments would cover up the multitudes of his epic failures.”
According to Shehu, using worship centres as platforms for making major official statements could create precedents that the country could not handle in the future.
He said if predecessor Presidents did not use the Mosques or Churches to make official statements of public importance, it is wrong for President Jonathan to start something that is already sending the wrong message.
The statement said with the exploitation of religion for political gains, President Jonathan and his PDP-led government have lost any basis to accuse its presidential candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari of being a religious “bigot” or “fanatic”.
Meanwhile, the APC presidential campaign said it was scandalized by reports of money being allegedly shared to religious leaders by President Jonathan in order to buy their conscience.
The APCPCO said it was incredibly embarrassed as to why a government would allegedly seek to bribe religious leaders in order to cover up its misdeeds and win re-election, despite its incompetence and non-performance.
It regretted that bribing religious leaders would not only bring them into disrepute but also make nonsense of President Jonathan’s claim to fight corruption.
Also, the campaign organisation called on the South-West to ignore the President on his repeated promises to implement the report of the National Confab because it contains nothing that approximates to their collective interest.
Whilst we are not averse to any group supporting any candidate for the forthcoming general election, it is vitally important to state that a recent purported endorsement of Jonathan by former Confab conferees from the South-west was predicated on spurious and utterly dishonest reason.
It is necessary to state that all points of the Yoruba agenda that could have favoured the South-West, in­cluding regional autonomy, restructuring, devolution of power and parliamentary system could not sail through at the conference.
These people knew that though they deceived Nigerians, particularly the Yoruba people, with the ostensible reason, but the real reason for the endorsement was the because of their personal economy. Some of them have had their personal finances transformed by way of juicy but dubious security contracts and handsome cash largesse by the government of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan at the expense of Nigerian people.
We consider it asinine that any group can predicate its support for Dr. Goodluck Jonathan on his promise to respect any agreement. The antecedents of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan speak eloquently of a serial promise breaker, unreliable keeper of gentlemanly agreement and unabashed turncoat! It would be recalled that the first real show of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan’s immense capacity for not keeping to pacts was when he, in 2010, conveniently walked away from his party’s North/South zoning arrangement, of which he was signatory to, with indescribable villainy. There is virtually a litany of reports from committees, which he empanelled, that have remained unimplemented in his four-year presidency thus far! Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, as President, who refused to assent to the Bill that will empower Nigerians with disabilities, is doubtful would ever contemplate supporting better life for Nigerians without disabilities.
It is a known fact that of all the four hundred and ninety two (492) members of the National confab members, none was elected by the people. A comparison of this arrangement with that of the Constituent Assembly of 1977 revealed a conference that had most of the members elected by the people and which naturally brought on the 1979 constitution. We are appalled that despite the pretences of members of this group to democracy, they thought it fit to attempt to stampede a Nation to giving assent to a piece of document that bore the imprimatur of a negligible minority. Truth be told, the conferees of the Confab were not representatives of the people!
It is on the basis of the foregoing that we believe that the purported endorsement of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan by members of this group was infernal, jejune, and meaningless. We urge the people of the South West to discountenance this as another distraction from the stable of the utterly despicable but desperate regime of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan.