We’ll never hang Buhari’s portrait in our offices –PDP

The national leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party has refused to hang the official portrait of President Muhammadu Buhari at the party’s national secretariat, checks by The PUNCH reported.

Over 100 days after the President assumed office, the PDP has yet to hang his portrait at any of the offices in its Wadata House national secretariat, located at Zone 5, Abuja.

The party has also said it would never put Buhari’s portraits on its walls though it has removed that of the former President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, who ruled on the platform of the PDP.

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“We will never hang his portrait in this office, because President Buhari is not known to our party. He is 

not a leader of our party and therefore we will never put his portrait here. We are a political party, very partisan and therefore, we are not going to hide that,” National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Olisa Metuh, told our correspondent on the telephone on Tuesday.

Jonathan was also the presidential candidate of the former ruling party during the last general election but he was defeated by Buhari, who was the presidential candidate of the opposition All Progressives Congress.

The defeat was the first to be suffered by the PDP since the return of democracy in 1999.

Before now, the party has always been hanging the portraits of all the Presidents at the party’s reception area as well as the National Executive Committee and National Working Committee halls within the secretariat.

Metuh said the APC also did not hang the portrait of Jonathan in its offices before the former President was defeated in the March 28 election.

“Can you find out if the APC had the portrait of former President Jonathan in their office before he was defeated? That is just it,” he told our correspondent.

When asked whether the party was taking its own pound of flesh, Metuh said no but that since Buhari “is not a member of our party, we won’t put his portrait here.”

The APC National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Lai Mohammed, expressed shock at Metuh’s comment.

“This is ridiculous and we have no comment. Let Nigerians judge the PDP on this matter,” Mohammed said.

He said the PDP spokesman had a shallow understanding of the concept of opposition politics.