Special Adviser, Media and Public Communications to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Sunday Dare, has criticized the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar, for stripping the president of his official status and merely addressing him by his first name at a media briefing.
Atiku, at a press conference on Friday where he called on the present administration to reduce the price of fuel to give succour to Nigerians, had evaded the official status of President Tinubu and simply addressed him as ‘Bola Tinubu.’
He said: ‘Bola Tinubu should not be ashamed to do what is necessary to lower the price of petrol simply because Atiku Abubakar proposed a government intervention.
‘He should just take the idea, rename it if he wishes, and even take the credit. What matters to me is that Nigerians pay less.’
Dare, in a post on his X handle, @SundayDareSD, accused the former Vice-President of insolence.
Dismissing the ADC presidential candidate’s appeal to President Tinubu to intervene and moderate the price of fuel, Dare declared that ‘Nigerians do not need lectures on fiscal management from a political wanderer whose decades-long pursuit of the presidency has been defined by perpetual opportunism.’
His post read: ‘Alhaji Atiku’s manner of addressing President Bola Tinubu as Bola is the height of insolence. It is a clear descent into the abyss of unbridled desperation and an unravelling mind.
‘To seek to lecture a sitting president with the unbridled insolence of dropping his first name, petulantly barking instructions, and dictating how governance should be run within a truncated timeline is the height of political hubris.
‘Nigerians do not need lectures on fiscal management from a political wanderer whose decades-long pursuit of the presidency has been defined by perpetual opportunism. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is doing the heavy, foundational lifting required to restructure an economy crippled by decades of structural inertia and subsidy hemorrhaging.
‘Atiku’s sudden conversion to the gospel of interventionism rings hollow. This is a desperate strategy by a perennial seeker of power who weaponizes transient national discomforts for electoral mileage.’