The director-general of Global Initiatives for Good Governance (GIGG), Dr Emeka Kalu, has lamented recent media and verbal attacks on former vice president Atiku Abubakar.
Kalu disclosed this in a statement made available to LEADERSHIP against the backdrop of verbal attacks on the Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 general election.
Kalu, who described those attacking Atiku as traducers and political detractors, declared that the attacks on Atiku’s personality amounted to a hatchet job, crookedly organised, and a ploy to weaken the former Vice President’s political platform.
He said, “Holistically, it is defamatory to be meaninglessly antagonising a respected national leader whose antecedents have remained befitting, especially in touching the lives of the masses.
“As a sagacious and resilient leader, Atiku Abubakar has been intentional in re-jigging the collapsing socio-political-economic structures of the nation when elected the next President, and it remains one of his continued points of National Transformation Agenda towards healing the wounds of APC’s lopsided governance in the country.
Kalu, therefore, demanded immediate retractions from the ‘attackers’ of the Presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 election or face lengthy legal action from the initiative.
He further described the prophecy of a popular clergyman in Lagos that PDP would lose the 2027 Presidential election if it fielded Atiku as its flagbearer as sentimentally- driven and unfounded.
He insisted that the degree of political antagonism, strife, hatred, mudslinging, and media attacks was the work of political opponents who had no good intentions for the country.
“So saddening that those who fed from the political pot of Waziri Adamawa to become relevant in the political society have chosen to denigrate his personality simply to please Atiku’s enemies,” he said.