Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin Okupe yesterday took a swipe on former FCT Minister, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai and Vice Presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) in the 2011 presidential elections, Pastor Tunde Bakare, for calling on President Goodluck Jonathan to resign from office.
El-Rufai had in an interview he granted a national daily newspaper, asked President Jonathan to resign in the face of mounting insecurity in the country.
But Okupe said while politics had already derailed the former minister, by the prophecies of the likes of Pastor Bakare, “you shall know them”.
He noted that no responsible citizen would call on the President to resign in the face of insurgency when all hands were supposed to be on deck to tackle the common enemies, adding that insecurity was a challenging national problem.
Okupe said: “But politics is more or less derailing or deranging him (El-Rufai). Everybody knows that insurgency is a very difficult national problem. It is not anything peculiar to Nigeria. No responsible citizen of any of those countries affected by insurgency before calls on their Presidents to resign.
“Can President Goodluck Jonathan be in Borno and everywhere at the same time? I believe that people just want to play politics. All what you are hearing is just the manipulation of the present situation to suit their political purposes.
“I am sure that my brother, El-Rufai, is hopeful to be a presidential candidate of one of the parties very soon. What I will expect him to do with the level of intellect, intelligence and the resource that have been given to his own personal education is to come out with some reasonable plans, some suggestions, not just criticising government for criticising sake.
“If El-Rufai was President of Nigeria, what will he do? Why doesn’t he say that? Or is he keeping that until when he becomes the President by which time the whole country is wiped off?