Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, has come under fire over his utterances about the North’s choice of presidential candidate to vote in the 2023 presidential poll.
The All Progressives Congress (APC); its presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and other Nigerians yesterday berated the PDP standard bearer for declaring during the Arewa town hall policy dialogue in Kaduna on Saturday that the North does not need a Yoruba or Igbo president.
“What the average Northerner needs is somebody who is from the North; he doesn’t need a Yoruba candidate or an Ibo candidate,” Atiku had stated at the event.
But reacting to Atiku’s comment, Tinubu said the former vice president cannot speak for the Northern region on its choice of president, just as the governing APC warned that he would would cause disunity among Nigerians and inflict the worst kind of strife if he is elected president.
Tinubu spoke through two of his spokespersons, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode and Bayo Onanuga.
Fani-Kayode, a former Aviation minister, who is currently the director of Special Media Projects and Operations of the Tinubu/Shettima Presidential Campaign Council (PCC), noted that what Nigerians need is a president of Nigeria and not a Northern president.
In a statement he issued in Abuja, Fani-Kayode said Atiku is “a dying breed who still sees things from a regional, ethnic and religious prism.”
He stated: “Nigeria has moved on from that and she deserves better. Our nation will not accept an ethnic bigot and tribal champion as their President. Atiku does not speak for the North; he speaks for his deluded and blind PDP supporters and his PCC.
“Nigeria does not need a Northern or Southern President; she needs a Nigerian President and Bola Ahmed Tinubu is that President.”
Fani-Kayode pointed out that most northerners are not on the same page with Atiku, adding that, unlike the former VP and members of his “divided party”, people from the region don’t see Southerners as slaves, adding that rather, they regard their southern counterparts as being equal.
He continued: “We will not allow Atiku to do to us what he did to Wike. We will not be cheated or denied.
“It is time for power to shift to the South and an overwhelming number of the people in the North and certainly all the Northerners in the APC believe that. They recognise the fact that if we want our nation to continue to enjoy peace and remain united into the distant future. We must be fair in our dealings with one another.”
On his part, the director of Media & Publicity of the Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council, Bayo Onanuga, said Atiku’s public declaration has framed him as an ethnic and regional champion, noting that it “is unbecoming for a man who was once a Vice-President of Nigeria”.
In a separate statement he issued yesterday, Onanuga said, “This clearly demonstrates how low a man honoured with the second highest office of the Nigerian Constitution is willing to sink in search of a perennial wild goose chase after the highest office in the land.
“It confirms the argument that Atiku has feasted on such base, cheap, primordial sentiments to use the masses and the elite of the North as the ladder to ascend to power since 1989 without any dividends to show.
The Tinubu/Shettima campaign spokesman accused Atiku of preserving the two topmost posts in his party for people from his region, adding that Atiku has himself, not anybody else, to blame for his expected electoral misfortune.
Onanuga continued: “The Nigerian public now know better that a man who has been campaigning as a so-called unifier of our disparate groups, is a tribal jingoist, who has now totally eviscerated all pretensions to being a detribalised Nigerian.
“He is demonstrably the anti-thesis of a pan-Nigerian politician. Nigerians of goodwill, who, daily, seek a united and prosperous nation, should reject Atiku and his party at the polls next February.”
For the governing APC, Atiku will disunite Nigeria and inflict the worst kind of strife if voted as president in 2023.
In a statement issued yesterday by its national publicity secretary, Felix Morka, the APC said Atiku’s utterance was a decisive attack on national unity.
Morka said, “Atiku’s statement is a decisive attack on our national unity. It is beyond the pale for a senior citizen and a former Vice President of the Federal Republic to so brazenly instigate strife and disunity in our country in pursuit of his befuddled political self interest.
“But it is not surprising coming from a desperate and serial failed candidate for the office of President. If, as Atiku believes, the average Northerner needs a Northern President now, after a Northern President, when will they ever not need a Northern President? What does Atiku think the average Southerner needs? Why is it about what the average Northerner needs, or even what the average Southerner may need?
“Why is it not about what Nigeria and Nigerians need? Nigerians need bold and visionary leadership anchored on a firm commitment to transcendental national unity, over and above ethnic or sectional obsessions. Atiku’s words ring loud of extreme and mindless desperation, and such an extremely desperate man cannot and must not be entrusted with the most important job of President – a job which core duty is that of leading, uniting and working in the best interest of all in an ethno-religious pluralistic society as Nigeria. Our country does not need this kind of highly inflammable rhetoric now or ever.”
The APC said it is even more worrisome that the comment was coming from Atiku who had touted himself to be on a mission to unify Nigeria.
It stayed: “The cat has finally been let out of the bag of him that pays lip service to unity while working hard to undermine our national unity. Our Northern citizens and patriots know far better than what Atiku thinks, and will not walk down that slippery slope with him.
“Evidently, Atiku seeks to inflict on Nigeria discord and strife of a worse kind than he has inflicted on his PDP. Against the dictates of his party’s constitution on the principle of power rotation between and North and South of Nigeria, Atiku wrested Presidential Candidacy and left his party in fractious disability.”
“In direct contrast to Atiku’s schismatic tendency, our Northern Progressive APC Governors stood valiantly in support of the emergence of a Southern Presidential Candidate of our Party in demonstration of patriotic commitment to national unity, equity and fairness. That is what Nigeria needs, now and ever.”
On his part, former presidential candidate, Prof Kingsley Moghalu, asked Atiku to apologise to Nigerians over his comment.
Moghalu who took to his twitter handle said he was disappointed over the comment of the former Vice President whom he said he still has respect for.
Moghalu tweeted: “I was very disappointed to view the video clip of H.E. Atiku Abubakar @atiku, a former Vice-President of Nigeria, telling an audience in Kaduna that what the North needs is a northerner to be President, and not a Yoruba or Igbo candidate.
“I have a lot of respect for Atiku who, despite his flaws (which all the other leading contenders also have) ,I have always regarded as a truly cosmopolitan politician in our country. His reference to his “building bridges” across the country does not negate his clear message.
“That message was a direct appeal to divisive ethnic sentiment and a denigration of the largest ethnic groups in Southern Nigeria. I think he should withdraw the statement and apologise to Nigerians for it.”
He however charged all candidates in the 2023 presidential election to avoid ethnic or other divisive sentimental appeals.
For technical assistant on Print Media in the vice president’s office, Louis Odion, by that comment, Atiku reaffirmed his commitment to destroying Nigeria’s unity to achieve his marabout-propelled presidential ambition.
Odion, in a piece titled, “Atiku: The peril of inordinate ambition”, said Atiku is a conflicted bigot, consumed by inordinate ambition.
He said, “With the catastrophic Freudian Slip yesterday before a northern audience in Kaduna, Atiku just reaffirmed his commitment to destroying Nigeria’s unity to achieve his marabout-propelled presidential ambition.
“The supreme irony is that this is the same man promising to ‘unify Nigeria again’ in his ongoing campaign messaging.
“But this presidential ‘candidate of habit’ will soon find again that the Nigeria of his depraved, bigoted dream no longer exists,” he said.
The presidential aide who recalled Atiku’s political trajectory said, “In 2011, he battled Jonathan for PDP ticket, on the argument that the ‘North has not used up its two term slots’, following Yar’Adua death in office on May 5, 2010. (Forget that he stubbornly refused entreaties not to go to court when the same Umar Yar’Adua was declared winner in 2007 in the spirit of ‘northern solidarity’ and fought like a wounded lion up to Supreme Court.) But he got a shellacking at the PDP primaries in 2011.
“In 2014, he, still driven by that inordinate ambition, again led the rebellion of nPDP to evacuate PDP in protest of Jonathan’s bid for 2nd (3rd?) term; that it was ‘the turn of power to shift to the North’, for the ‘sake of justice and equity’.
“In 2018, realizing he stood no chance against President Buhari’s winning 2nd term in 2019, he migrated back to PDP. Of course, he suffered another shellacking in 2019. With the power of Dollars and thoughtless invocation of the ethnic card at PDP’s May primaries, he overpowered Southern contenders (like Wike) to the presidential ticket.”
Atiku Hits Back At APC, Says It Turned Facts On Its Head
But Atiku did not just fold his arms and watch the barrage of attacks on him. He accused the APC of turning facts on its head.
In a statement by his media aide, Paul Ibe, titled, “The emptiness of failed APC and their entitled candidate”, Atiku said it was regrettable that APC would decide to cause a show of shame by a disingenuous attempt to turn fact on its head about what he said during a public engagement at the Arewa House on Saturday.
Ibe stated: “For the benefit of the innocent public who might be hoodwinked by the usual behavior of APC in telling a big lie, what transpired was a direct question to Atiku to address the Northern audience on why he should be voted for by the Northern electorate.
“In answering this question, Atiku started with a joke by addressing the questioner as ‘Mr. Northerner’ which is a veiled criticism of why he limited his question to the Northern audience in the first place.
“Continuing, Atiku explained without a slur, unlike the APC candidate would, that what matters the most to the Northern electorate is a candidate who has built bridges of unity across other parts of the country and not necessarily a Northern candidate who lacks the credentials of national spread and acceptability.
“Those were the unambiguous remarks of the PDP presidential candidate. But because the APC does not possess any tangible ideas to campaign on for their candidate, they resorted to dubious tactics of diverting public attention, first, away from the failures of their party in the past seven years plus and, secondly, to shift attention away from the embarrassing gaffes of their presidential candidate in his public communication which they frequently shy away from.
“Of course, a failed political party and a presidential candidate who cannot withstand five minutes of unscripted speech would not have anything tangible to talk about other than to resort to irritating scavenging like they have done in this case.
“On the same day when Atiku Abubakar stood agile and cerebral before his hosts at the Arewa House, the APC candidate whose only entitlement for president is because of an ethnic identity claim was also at a public function in Kaduna State and publicly embarrassed his host, Governor Nasir el-Rufai, by saying that he should not contemplate pursuing higher educational qualifications and likening him to ‘a rotten case that has turned into a bad situation.”
After Atiku, Northern Leaders To Engage Tinubu Today
Meanwhile, presidential candidate of the APC, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, will today honour the invitation of northern leaders under the auspices of Arewa Joint Committee for an interactive session.
According to a statement by Tinubu’s media aide, Tunde Rahman, the meeting billed to hold at the Arewa House in Kaduna is part of a wider interaction with selected presidential candidates to discuss their plans for the region, ahead of the 2023 general elections.
He noted that the event is organised by a coalition of six groups and institutions from the North, including the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation, Northern Elders Forum (NEF), Arewa House, Jam’iyyar Matan Arewa and Arewa Research and Development Project.
The statement noted that Tinubu would attend the event “as part of his decision to engage all segments of the Nigerian society with his campaign message of hope, national unity and prosperity.
“The open interaction, scheduled for 1pm on Monday, will be televised live on Television Continental (TVC)”, Rahman added.
