The All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Organisation (APCPCO) has thanked Nigerians for putting up with “an incredibly crude woman,” Patience Jonathan, as Nigeria’s first lady, Thisday reports.
Speaking on Tuesday during the PDP women presidential campaign rally in Kogi State, Mrs. Jonathan had described Muhammadu Buhari, APC’s presidential candidate, as unfit to be the country’s president.
“Wetin him dey find again? Him dey drag with him pikin mate,” she said in pidgin English. “Old man wey no get brain, him brain don die pata pata.”
But responding in a statement issued yesterday in Abuja and obtained by an online news medium, TheCable, APCPCO said it was not only insulting for the president’s wife to describe Buhari as “brain-dead,” but it was also demeaning of her status as the first lady.
“President Jonathan is urged to call his wife to order,” Shehu Garba, its director of media and publicity, said.
“It is 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 times, 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 it was below the standard of a wife of a president to stoop so low to call for violent attacks against members of the opposition.
“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,” he added.
“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.”
