Why I don’t always respond to Fayose’s comment – Oshiomhole

The immediate past governor of Edo State, Adams Oshiomhole has berated the Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose for persistently criticizing President Muhammadu Buhari over his ill-health.

Addressing a group of journalists, Oshiomhole said he always doesn’t like to join issues with Fayose as he (Fayose) does not really make sense.

Oshiomole maintained that the President took the right step by transferring powers to his deputy, Yemi Osinbajo before embarking on his medical vacation.

He stressed that despite the mirage of criticism against the President by Fayose, some governors on the Platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, can testify to the fact that Buhari is actually sick.

According to Oshiomhole, “I don’t like to discuss Fayose because when he makes such statements, it reminds me of an Igbo proverb which says that if a responsible man is having his bath after a hard days work and he removes his cloth in a local bathroom and a mad man carries his cloth and the man bathing seeing that the mad man has carried your cloth and you run out naked pursuing him. The people will see two naked people running and they will say two mad men. So sometimes you just allow the mad man to carry your cloths and go rather than joining him in his madness.

“That is my comment on Fayose. One of my very good friends wrote something in the papers criticising the pictures taken by the president and the APC governors. He was saying that may be a broadcast would have been better.

“But I ask, if the head of a family is sick and some people went to see him, first there is nothing unusual about that to visit the sick in their sick bed or in their homes, to show that you care. I believe most Nigerians are praying for the quick recovery of the president, so if people go there and sat with the president and took a picture it shows that yes the president is sick but it is not as bad as what people are saying.

 “Some were carrying rumours that he was on life support but people have seen that at least that is not true. As at the time he wrote that piece only APC governors visited but now some PDP governors also went and I hope he will write another article.

“For me, the president has been conscious of the provisions of the constitution and had complied in full with the extant provisions of the constitution by admitting to the fact that for now that he is ill, and he needs medication somewhere, that he has asked his deputy, in line with the provisions of the constitution to act on his behalf.

“I don’t see how the president can be much more transparent than that. I am happy that some PDP governors have also gone to see him. but what many of us do not know is that there have been governors who have been absent from their states for three months, even on health grounds in PDP that I know, and they came back from those long medical vacations to assume duties and today they are alive.

“So as they say the sick is not necessary next and for me we should all continue in our honest prayers and pray for the quick recovery of our president and not inhuman comments by some persons. We had a president under the PDP who clearly was unable to even recognise people and they were debating whether he signed a budget or he did not sign a budget.

“But you know in this environment people have short memory. Those who were very active then, purporting that the president signed a budget which he was not in a position to sign, and mimicking a voice in BBC, they are also talking now. Now we have a president who sat with both PDP and APC governors and I think that closes the issue of the health of the president.”