Kassim Afegbua, a former campaign spokesman for ex-Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has disclosed that his former boss should not be trusted with the Peoples Democratic Party’s presidential ticket for the 2023 general elections.
He said the party could not afford to make the same mistake it made in 2019 when Atiku abandoned all his foot soldiers and sought refuge in faraway Dubai, UAE after he lost the presidential election to President Muhammadu Buhari.
Afegbua made the call in a statement he personally signed on Sunday, titled, “PDP 2023: Atiku Abubakar Lied”, in reaction to a statement credited the former vice president that he always gets the PDP presidential ticket.
He noted that contrary to the claim, Atiku had only represented the party once; in the 2019 presidential contest since the formation of the PDP.
The statement read in part, “I read with dismay the statement credited to former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar where he boasted that he would always get the presidential ticket of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP. At a time when the former Vice President should be working towards strengthening the structures of the party for more electoral victories, the only thing that bothers him is all about his selfish aspiration.
“It was only in 2019 that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar emerged as the candidate of the PDP at the Port Harcourt convention when it was decided by the Southern aspirants to allow All Northern aspirants to contest the primary election. So, the claim that ‘I will always get the ticket of the PDP flies in the face of logic, fact and reality.”
Afegbua noted that rather than his presidential ambition in 2023, Atiku “should be thinking of how to support young Nigerians from the Southern part of the country to pursue the presidential aspiration of the opposition party.”
The statement added, “We cannot afford the mistake of 2019 when Alhaji Abubakar abandoned all his foot-soldiers and sought refuge in faraway Dubai. A true political General ought to secure his troops and return them to the barracks after the war to carry out a critical assessment before knowing the next step.
“Rather than borrow a leaf from the Ukrainian President, Zelensky, who has been standing by his Ukrainian nationals, to the extent of carrying AK-47 to the battlefront to secure his country from Russian invasion, Alhaji Abubakar ran away to Dubai and exposed all of us to the threats and intimidation of the monstrous APC in 2019.
“Such a leader cannot be trusted with the responsibility of representing our aggregate interest in the struggle for 2023. No amount of closed-door meetings with former leaders can change the oscillation of the political pendulum in 2023.
“Except he’s being deceived, no former president would support an Atiku presidency, at a time they all have spoken loudly about fielding younger President in 2023.”
