COVID-19: Accept your failure to coordinate response – PDP blasts Buhari

The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, on Friday berated the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Presidency for seeking to transfer the brunt of its failures to articulate and coordinate an effective national response on COVID-19 pandemic on state governors.

PDP described the passing down of blames on state governors as an unpardonable manifestation of leadership
failure.

Kola Ologbondiyan, PDP’s spokesperson said Buhari should accept his failure to coordinate an effective response to COVID-19.

The party said the decision of “Buhari’s Presidency to run to state governors for solutions after it had badly muddled up the process, leading to confusion across the country and a consequential spike in infection and fatality rates, is rather coming very late in the day.”

A statement signed by Ologbondiyan reads: “Nigerians can recall how our party and other well-meaning Nigerians repeatedly counseled the Buhari Presidency to involve state governors, the private sector and critical stakeholders for an effective multisectoral and multilayered approach, to no avail.

“The Buhari Presidency rebuffed wise counsels and settled for a parochial response marred by corruption, nepotism, incompetence and narrow-minded politics, only to now turn to seek to transfer the brunt of its colossal failure to state governors.”

PDP described the call by the National Coordinator of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, Dr. Sani Aliyu, on state governments to take ownership of the response, as an “acceptance of failure by President Buhari, who did not lead from the front but abdicated the task to incompetent and narrow-minded officials.”

The opposition party insisted that the poor handling of the COVID-19 response has further highlighted the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led Federal Government’s lack of capacity to manage important national issues.

The PDP added: “Our party invites Nigerians to note that the three states, where the Buhari-led Federal Government took up the management of the COVID-19 pandemic, namely; Abuja, Lagos and Ogun states, had recorded very high statistics in infection and fatality rates compared to states where it was not involved.”