The Coalition for United Political Parties (CUPP) has rejected former vice president and the presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party in the 2023 presidential election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, as the rallying point of opposition parties in Nigeria ahead of the 2027 general elections.
In a statement by the national secretary, High Chief Peter Ameh made available to journalists in Abuja yesterday, he said the attention of CUPP had been drawn to a newspaper publication (Not LEADERSHIP) proposing and projecting former Atiku Abubakar by one of his aides to lead the opposition political parties in Nigeria.
He said, “We in CUPP hereby wish to disassociate ourselves from that proposition because of the reasons mentioned hereunder.”
Listing the reasons for rejecting Atiku, the national scribe said; “CUPP had worked with Atiku in the past only to realise later that we worked for a candidate who cared for himself, his ambition, and his own ambition only without giving a hoot for other coalition partners. It is also in the public sphere that former vice president Atiku has severally professed his aversion for multi-party democracy. He is a fan of either one or two party systems only.”
He recalled that in the run-up to 2019 general elections, more than 35 political parties went into a coalition which led to the formation of CUPP as it is today with PDP and Atiku as its consensus presidential candidate, noting that
CUPP worked tirelessly for Atiku to become the president of Nigeria, but lost at the polls. He said after Atiku lost he turned his back on his coalition partners and practically threw the coalition parties under the bus and ran away to Dubai only to surface towards the 2023 general elections.
CUPP queried how a man who is so enamoured with a one party system and had severally professed his aversion for multi-party democracy lead and be nominated to be in the forefront of such struggle.