Former minister of Information and political, Edwin Clark, has spoken against the leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party in considering a waiver grant to former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Nuhu Ribadu, to enable him contest the party’s primary for the forthcoming Adamawa governorship election.
Clark said this at a press conference in Abuja on Thursday, saying Ribadu has no political value and that the enemies of President Goodluck Jonathan are those behind the former EFCC who contested as presidential candidate of now defunct Action Congress of Nigeria.
Ribadu, who recently defected from the All Progressives Congress to the PDP, has collected the party’s Expression of Interest form to participate in the October 11 bye-election in Adamawa.
However, in an open letter addressed to the national chairman of the PDP, Adamu Mu’azu, read to journalists, at the conference, said there is nothing positive about Ribadu and that he would bring nothing to the ruling party in the long run.
“What, really, is our party receiving so joyfully? What is the political value of this emerging treachery, the well-established bone-marrow trademark of the man, Ribadu?
“In 2011 election, Ribadu ran for president on the platform of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria, lost at his family home polling booth, and also his ward, scored a mere 32 votes in Yola, and 32,786 total in Adamawa, against Gen. Muhammadu Buhari’s 344,526 and President Goodluck Jonathan’s 508,314,” Clark said.
According to the South South region leader know for his controversial statements, Ribadu has never expressed gratitude to President Goodluck Jonathan despite the president saving him from public disgrace by converting his dismissal to retirement as Assistant Inspector General of Police.
“Seemingly, not imbued with a spirit of gratitude, Ribadu has, up till this moment, failed to show respect to Mr. President, who magnanimously saved him the odious stigma of the status of ‘dismissed-with-ignomy’ to the honourable one of ‘retirement-with-full-benefits’
“Not only that, Jonathan’s administration dressed him up with a high-profile appointment as chairman of the Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force Committee, against the run of play.
“His response? A failed drama of trumped-up indictment of government, the fingers that thought to feed his thinned-out public image, following battering it rightly received during the Yar’Adua administration, Clark added.
