The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has accused President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration of exploiting the death of former President Muhammadu Buhari to score political points and whitewash what it described as a “battered public image.”
In a press statement signed by Bolaji Abdullahi, its interim national publicity secretary, on Friday, the opposition party condemned the Federal Executive Council’s (FEC) recent tribute to Buhari, calling it a “calculated public relations stunt by an unpopular government.”
The ADC said it was hypocritical for the same administration that has “spent over a year blaming, sidelining, and scapegoating” Buhari for the country’s challenges to now perform public grief for political advantage, especially among Buhari loyalists in Northern Nigeria.
“The choreographed Federal Executive Council (FEC) tribute, complete with a publicised appearance by our late President’s grieving son, was not a demonstration of genuine respect,” the ADC said. “It was a calculated public relations stunt by an unpopular government, carefully stage-managed to distract Nigerians from the administration’s deepening failures and to rewrite history while the nation mourns.”
The party took issue with the presence of Buhari’s son, Yusuf, at the FEC meeting, describing it as an inappropriate attempt to use a grieving private citizen for political spectacle.
“It is equally troubling that the young man, Mr. Yusuf Buhari, a private citizen and grieving son, was pulled into the political theatre of a Federal Executive Council meeting, just days after burying his father,” the statement read. “What kind of government uses the private pain of a bereaved family to varnish its own public image?”
The ADC reminded Nigerians that the Tinubu government had consistently blamed Buhari’s policies for the current economic difficulties, only to now “cloak itself in the very legacy it once denounced.”
“They have blamed Buhari for everything, accused him of fiscal recklessness, and claimed to have inherited a broken economy—not from the opposition, but from their own party’s former leader,” the party said. “But now that it suits their political agenda, they seek to recast themselves as defenders of the late President’s legacy, pretending to give him in death the honour they denied him while he was alive.”
The party also reiterated a previous warning to Buhari’s family about the government’s alleged intention to make political gains from the former president’s death. “What we witnessed at the Federal Executive Council this week was only a part of the larger plan that had only started to unfold,” it added.
While extending condolences to the Buhari family, the ADC urged Nigerians to remain vigilant and not be swayed by what it called “grand deceit.”
“No public relations stunt can save a government that has behaved in the last two years like an army of occupation,” the statement concluded.
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