Your Inordinate Ambition Fractured PDP, APC Campaign Tells Atiku

•Says coming second was the best he could have achieved

Adedayo Akinwale in Abuja

The Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has said that the inordinate ambition of the Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar fractured the main opposition party.

The spokesperson of the campaign, Festus Keyamo in a statement issued yThursday said it was comical to see that Atiku claimed victory at the polls together with Mr. Peter Obi of Labour Party with whom his party has been holding press conferences. 

He said: “In the typical fashion of the last kick of a dying horse, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar this evening addressed the Press and claimed that the 2023 Presidential Election was neither free nor fair. He made this bogus claim without providing a shred of evidence, except to trumpet the noise made by his supporters on social media.”

Keyamo noted that Atiku also went ahead to make unfounded derogatory comments about the person of the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu in obvious bitterness and frustration.

He noted: “Atiku’s bid for the Presidency this time around was dead on arrival when his inordinate ambition fractured his party into 3 parts, with Alhaji Rabiu Kwankwanso and Mr. Peter Obi breaking away to the NNPP and the Labour Party respectively.”

Keyamo added that the massive loss he suffered in traditional PDP zones and States was a clear testament to this, adding that one wonders,  how he expected to have won the election. 

He stressed that Atiku should be thankful that he even exceeded expectations in the elections by coming second with all the distractions and fractured party with which he campaigned.

According to him,  He must have sensed beforehand that he was headed for a humiliating defeat that should have  put him a distant third or fourth in the elections. 

He added that his performance was therefore the best he could achieve. 

Keyami states: “Firstly, Atiku Abubakar breached the zoning principle within his own party by insisting on running for President when that was clearly against the mood of the nation; even after emerging as a candidate, the PDP itself continued to rub insult on the faces of southern leaders in the Party by insisting on keeping the position of National Chairman in the North. 

“This obviously led to the rebellion of the G-5 Governors and their subsequent sabotage of the PDP before the polls and at the polls by campaigning against ATIKU’S candidature. His failure to unite his party and manage this post-primaries fall-out was his eventual undoing.”

The campaign spokesperson noted that Nigerians have since seen through the ambition of Atiku that it was merely self-serving, saying  he had run for Presidency at every point in time in the last 30 years, irrespective of the zoning tilt of the nation. 

He said, “Following his successive failures and rejection by Nigerians in different elections, it should be clear to him by now that he is simply unelectable. The expositions relating his self-confessed mode of syphoning public funds whilst in office through SPVs further dented his aspiration before Nigerians.

“Atiku Abubakar’s decision to challenge the outcome of the results is welcome. We are prepared to meet his challenge, no matter the nature of the challenge, anywhere and anytime.”

Keyamo said If Atiku was not embracing the olive branch extended to him and other losers in the 2023 elections by the President-elect, the least he could do was to quietly relocate to Dubai which has become his traditional home base.