The Peoples Democratic Party Presidential Campaign Organisation has defended First Lady, Patience Jonathan, who on Tuesday described the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, as “brain-dead.”
“Wetin him (Buhari) dey find again? Him dey drag with him pickin mate. Old man wey no get brain, him brain don die pata pata,” the President’s wife said in her usual Pidgin English at the PDP Women Presidential Campaign Rally in Lokoja, the Kogi State capital.
An angry APC responded on Wednesday, calling her “an incredibly crude woman”.
Director of Media and Publicity of the PDPPCO, Femi Fani-Kayode, in a response to the APC Thursday in Abuja, said, “The First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, was absolutely right. To say that General Buhari is “brain dead” is an understatement and to suggest that he is suffering from dementia is nothing new.
“The First Lady has spoken in a courageous and forthright manner and, most important of all, she has spoken the bitter truth. Instead of crying like spoilt little brats and complaining, the APC and the Buhari Campaign Organisation should live with that bitter truth and leave her alone.
“She has every right to express herself in any way that she deems fit and she is entitled to her opinion. This is especially so given the fact that her husband, President Goodluck Jonathan, is in the presidential race.”
Fani-Kayode said Buhari’s general disdain for women and their opinion was well known, adding, “This is a man that said that he would scrap the office of the First Lady if he is elected President.”
He stated further: “If he is not ready to face public scrutiny and criticism for his often times irresponsible, retrogressive, nonsensical and asinine views, he should quit the presidential race and consider retiring from politics.
“Our counsel to the APC is as follows: leave the First Lady alone or prepare yourselves for a relentless verbal blitzkrieg, the likes of which you have never seen before.”
The APC had earlier suggested that Fani-Kayode might be in need of psychiatric evaluation himself.
Some PDP members had criticised Mr. Buhari, who turned 72 last December, for either being too old for the office of president.
The Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayose, has repeatedly said the APC candidate was sick and could not stand the rigours the office demanded if elected.
He recalled some of Nigeria’s past leaders who died in office, saying Nigeria might be forced into that situation again.
Mr. Fayose recently alleged that Mr. Buhari’s visit to London was in connection with his ill-health which he claimed the APC candidate wanted to attend to.
Mr. Buhari, a former military head of state, who is still in London, however delivered a lecture at Chatham House where he unveiled the reasons he wants to return to power.
Governor Fayose, 55, had described the APC flag-bearer as “a car with a damaged engine but being packaged by Tinubu and his cabal whose only interest is the wealth of Nigeria”.
Before him, the Director General of President Jonathan’s campaign, Ahmadu Ali, who turned 79 on March 1, had in January described Mr. Buhari as a “septuagenarian with fossilised ideas of how to run a government and social engineering.”
Mr. Ali had in December likened the former head of state to “an old plane that has been parked for long”.
