(Abuja)
The decision to move almajiris to their states of origin was made at a meeting of Governors of northern states and has nothing to do with President Muhammadu Buhari who has neither the power nor the inclination to give such directive.
The Buhari Media Organisation (BMO) made this clarification in its response to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP’s) allegation that Buhari had ‘betrayed the almajiris’, describing PDP statement as ‘mischievous, myopic and political rascality taken too far’.
In a statement signed by Niyi Akinsiju and Cassidy Madueke, Chairman and Secretary respectively in Abuja on Tuesday, BMO noted that the opposition party’s statement was, as usual, unsubstantiated, ill-motivated, and self-serving.
BMO said:”While exonerating President Buhari from any involvement in the recent movements of the almajiris across the northern states, we say emphatically that the decision for that action was taken at a recent meeting of 19 northern states Governors.
“This decision was arrived at by PDP and APC governors across the North, a bipartisan party decision: how then has President Buhari come into this?”
The NGO recalled that former President Goodluck Jonathan commissioned the first Model Boarding School for the Almajiris in Sokoto in April 2012.
It noted that at the occasion, Jonathan did say that while construction of such schools might be the responsibility of the federal government, their management was in the hands of the state governments.
On the allegation that the Buhari administration has wrecked the lives of ordinary Nigerians and rendered many homeless, BMO said this was not only laughable but far from the truth.
“Rather, the Buhari administration has impacted positively on the lives of Nigerians in its six years, more than PDP did in its 16 years. We see this as self-indictment of the PDP.
“The social investment, poverty alleviation and infrastructural development programmes are laudable, people-friendly projects that the opposition party couldn’t even dream of”.
BMO urged Nigerians to continue to support the President in moving Nigeria to the next level of poverty alleviation, infrastructural development, economic growth and prosperity”
