PHRANK Shaibu, the Special Assistant on Public Communications to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has called for the resignation of the Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo, over his disagreement with the Muhammadu Buhari administration’s cash swap policy.
Keyamo had during an interview with Channels Television’s Politics Today on Friday, February 18, expressed his disapproval of the handling of the naira swap policy, saying that Buhari might have acted on the wrong advice.
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He noted that the president ought to have obeyed the decision of the apex court.
He also affirmed that the policy was not a cabinet decision, alleging that Buhari might have, therefore, been advised wrongly.
Keyamo rationalized his position by saying that as a lawyer and inner member of the Bar, he was bound to defend the Supreme Court of the land.
“My view is that the President acted honestly without intention to slight the Supreme Court, but he may have acted on wrong advice. I did not give that advice; it’s not my responsibility. I don’t know who gave that advice,” he said.
Responding to Keyamo’s position in a statement on Saturday, February 18, Shaibu called on the minister to resign since he was unhappy about the government’s decision.
He said that if Keyamo truly believed that the President erred, he ought to resign as minister to dissociate himself from the president’s action.
Describing Keyamo as a hypocrite, Shaibu noted that he had in the past defended Buhari’s decision to ignore court orders based on national security.
He said, “During his ministerial screening at the Senate in 2019, Keyamo pointedly told the 109 senators gathered that human rights and the rule of law can be put in abeyance for the sake of national security.
“Today that his party is on the receiving end of a policy that will stop vote-buying, he suddenly remembers the rule of law and is pontificating on respect of court orders. What a joke! This is a man that abandoned his calling as a human rights activist the moment he was called to the APC’s dinner table in 2018.”
Shaibu also described Keyamo’s claim that Buhari was acting based on wrong advice as jejune and insulting, stating that it portrayed the president as “a helpless old man who does not have a mind of his own.”
He called on Keyamo to resign boldly and criticize the president with his full chest instead of attacking unnamed advisers of the president.
Shaibu wondered why Keyamo failed to exhibit his activism when the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) spent 10 months on strike in 2020 and eight months on strike in 2022.
“To be clear, Festus Keyamo has been the Minister of State for Labour and Employment since 2019. Under the watch of this retired activist and erstwhile rights crusader, ASUU has spent a combined 18 months on strike in 43 months. Keyamo never spoke up. He dumped ASUU at the negotiation table to go and campaign for Bola Tinubu.
“When he was confronted on national television, he asked his parents to go and negotiate with lecturers. Suddenly, he has found his voice because of a cashless policy that will deter his new master from deploying bullion vans on election day,” Shaibu said.
He called on Keyamo to also resign as spokesman for the Bola Tinubu Presidential Campaign Council, noting that it would be hypocritical of Keyamo, who is a former prosecutor of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), to serve as the image maker of Tinubu, whom he claimed was not only under investigation by the EFCC but was made to forfeit $460,000 to American authorities for alleged drug trafficking.
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