Atiku Alleges Plot to Tear APC Apart

By Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja

Former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has raised the alarm over the activities of some fifth columnists trying desperately to cause disunity within the All Progressives Congress (APC)

Atiku dismissed as a load of hogwash a newspaper report alleging that he had formed a new political platform on which he would run for president in 2019, with Ondo State Governor Segun Mimiko as his running mate.

He said the aim of those fuelling such trouble was to portray him as being disloyal to President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC leadership.

In statement signed by his Media Adviser, Mr. Paul Ibe, the former vice president said the report bears all the features of a political hatchet job planted by his opponents who have desperately tried to invent events in order to draw a wedge between him and President Buhari on one hand and APC leadership as a whole.

The statement alerted Nigerians and APC leadership that there are “some people of bad faith trying tooth and nail to spread the seeds of discord in the party, and destroy the much needed unity, harmony and cohesion  which are the pillars of strength for every political organisation.”

Ibe said despite all these smear campaigns and reputation-lynching and sponsored falsehoods, the Atiku’s loyalty to President Buhari and the APC leadership would not be shaken an inch.

According to Ibe, “The report was an incompetent product of fiction, so shallow and vacuous that even its authors could not validate its credibility with reliable and verifiable sources.”

He explained that Atiku would ordinarily have ignored the malicious report, but said he chose to react, lest his silence would be mistaken as an admission of the falsehoods published against him.