The Presidential Campaign Council of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has described the endorsement of the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, by some socio-cultural organisations and ethnic groups as fraudulent.
Leaders of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), Afenifere, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Pan Niger Delta Forum (PADEF) after a summit yesterday, endorsed Atiku for the February 16 presidential race.
But, in a swift reaction, the director of Strategic Communications of the APC Campaign Council, Mr. Festus Keyamo (SAN), said that some individuals had in the past used the groups purportedly to represent their people and as such enjoyed huge government patronage.
Keyamo, in a press statement he issued last night, noted that these same groups supported the PDP presidential candidate in the 2015 elections, which President Buhari won.
The feat, according to Keyamo, was possible because Buhari worked his ways directly to the mind of Nigerians.
He expressed the confidence that Nigerians would again put the PDP in the dustbin of history during the 2019 elections.
Keyamo said: “In the past, it used to be that some of these individuals have used the names of these groups and platforms to purport to represent their people and as such enjoyed huge government patronage. The proceeds of this patronage have never trickled down to their people they purport to represent but ended up in their pockets and benefitted only their immediate families. This is in perfect tune with the campaign promise of Atiku Abubakar to enrich only his friends. Therefore, like bees and honey, these people and Atiku Abubakar are attracted to themselves.
“Unfortunately for them, President Muhammadu Buhari has managed to navigate his way directly to the masses, who they purport to represent, and is ensuring that the dividends of democracy reach the people directly. Their annoyance is that they have been eliminated as middlemen. That is why the bond between the masses and President Buhari continues to grow on a daily basis,” Keyamo stated.
Keyamo declared that it was fraudulent to project that Atiku is in a tight race with Buhari, noting that such projections were meant to rubbish the electoral process.
He said: “It is also fraudulent to project the reduction in the advantage the president has always enjoyed in his traditional base, but fail to see the massive inroads the president has also made into the traditional bases of the PDP. These and many other funny and fraudulent projections are what we know the PDP is using to prepare the ground to rubbish the electoral process which its leaders know is an insurmountable mountain for them to climb. They are, therefore, going for broke.
“We want to alert Nigerians to be firm and unwavering in their resolve not to go back to the vomit which they spewed forth in the shape of PDP in 2015. Nigerians have seen through the PDP and its presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar (who has been described by his former employer in the most debasing language ever found on print) and Nigerians can no longer be deceived,” he added.
Keyamo stated that there was no bigger fraud than what some known members and sympathisers of the PDP described as endorsements.
“There is no fraud bigger than that of known PDP members and/or hardened PDP sympathisers wearing the apparel of socio-cultural groups, purporting to represent entire regions and endorsing their own political party. The so-called PDP-induced ‘endorsement’ of its candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, by a few individuals claiming, albeit falsely, to represent their respective regions. These are PANDEF, Northern Elders’ Forum (NEF), Ohanaeze Ndigbo, a tiny faction of Afenifere and Middle Belt Forum.
“Certain projections by a section of the press that give the impression that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar is in some kind of a tight race with President Muhammadu Buhari in respect of the 2019 presidential election. As regards the endorsements by the above-named socio-cultural groups, the impression given through these endorsements that PDP is expanding its support base is also an attempt to deceive Nigerians because these are groups that supported the PDP in 2015 and lost the election along with PDP.
“Therefore, their excuse that they are supporting Alhaji Atiku Abubakar because of the bogey called ‘restructuring’ is nothing but a subterfuge. In any case, Ohanaeze had said in its earlier release that the first reason they are endorsing Atiku Abubakar is that his running mate is an Ibo man.
“The curious question we ask is that, where were these social-cultural groups all these years when the PDP squandered our resources and failed to develop critical infrastructure in their respective regions? Are they saying that they are satisfied with the level of development of infrastructure in their respective regions during the 16 years of PDP rule? Where is the outrage of these socio-cultural groups as the Buhari administration has so far recovered from PDP members and their allies a total of nearly N800billion, 407 mansions, 259 automobiles, farmlands, filling stations, etc – all belonging to the Nigerian people? Where is their outrage? Instead they are endorsing these same set of people who perpetrated this evil against the Nigerian people.
“Second, as to the voodoo percentages allocated to Alhaji Atiku Abubakar in some voodoo projections by some media houses (which should have since changed their crests to the umbrella – the symbol of the PDP), it is laughable to see them project a tight race between President Muhammadu Buhari and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. For instance, we note with amusement the clear lead given to Alhaji Atiku Abubakar in the South East, just because his running mate is from the region, but fail to see that same clear advantage given to President Buhari in the South West from where the Vice President comes,” he said.
Ango Abdullahi On His Own – Capt Sodangi
There were however cracks in the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) on Atiku’s endorsement by the group.
A member of NEF, Capt Bashir Sodangi dissociated the forum from the endorsement insisting that NEF convener, Professor Ango Abdullahi, who was at the ethnic leaders’ meeting where the endorsement took place, acted alone.
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Speaking to LEADERSHIP last night, Captain Sodangi said that the forum never met to deliberate on the endorsement of Atiku, noting “we have not endorsed Atiku and we are not going to endorse him”.
He insisted that most of the forum’s members are not with Prof. Abdullahi whom he accused of breaking away from majority of the members.
Sodangi listed other members of NEF, who are opposed to the endorsement as Gen. Paul Tarfa, Sani Zangon Daura, Prof. Auwalu Yadudu, Ambassador Usman Baraya and Hon. Bala Kaoje. He said that “very soon, we will tell the world who we are going to support in the election.”
NEF, Ohanaeze, Others Gang Up Against PMB Will Fail – Presidency
Also yesterday, the presidency declared that the endorsement of Atiku by leaders and elders of the socio-cultural organisations would fail.
LEADERSHIP recalls that the leader of NEF, Prof. Ango Abdullahi, his Ohanaeze Ndigbo counterpart, Nnia John Nwodo, Afenifere’s Ayo Adebanjo, Chief Edwin Clark of PANDEF and Middle Belt Forum’s Betrus Pogu, and others, such as Alhaji Tanko Yakassai as well as Buba Galadima endorsed Atiku for the presidency.
But, presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, said that the current scenario resembles efforts to stop Buhari in 2015 by the same leaders, saying the gang up would still fail.
He asserted that Nigerians would decide who they want as their president on February 16.
Shehu said: “The PDP is hiding in the bunker of ethnicity to avoid its inevitable defeat, but that won’t change anything.
“The current scenario resembles efforts to stop Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 by the same characters. It is an effort to repeat the old experiment that failed in 2015. They failed to stop him from coming to power in 2015 and they will fail yet again on February 16.
“If all these groups are ganging up against one person, that is President Buhari, it tells you who is the formidable candidate in the election. This gang up they forged, one more time, will change nothing. It is for the people to decide,” he stated.
NEF, Afenifere, Ohaneze, PANDEF Defend Action
Defending their action, Abdullahi, Adebanjo, Clark, Nwodo, Pogu, Yakassai, and Galadima said that the Buhari administration had not lived up to the expectations of Nigerians who voted for it in the last presidential, They alleged that the president had failed the nation, hence their support for Atiku.
Speaking one after the other at a third summit of Nigerian leaders and elders in Abuja, they described Buhari as not fit to be given another chance to govern the country.
The leaders said that Nigeria is not only in trouble now but there is a constitutional crisis under the APC.
“I join the Ohanaze, the Afenifere, the Northern Elders Forum and on behalf of the Niger Delta people, Atiku is our presidential candidate,” Clark stated at the event.
Presenting a communiqué at the end of the summit, the leaders averred that: “The Forum, having concluded a thorough evaluation of all candidates aspiring to lead our nation through its current challenges and engineer genuine national rebirth, has decided to note: that several of the younger candidates who presented themselves for the presidential election, demonstrated great capacity and promise to lead this country creditably and ensure that it engenders proper social and economic development to its people.
“However, most of these qualified younger candidates do not, at present, have the machinery and structures to win a presidential election in Nigeria.
“Therefore, we adopt the candidate of the PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the PDP as the consensus candidate for the office of president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as he has demonstrated the deep understanding of the critical needs of the country at this time and possesses the capacity to proffer clear solutions in that respect.
“We call on all Nigerians, irrespective of religious or ethnic background to stand in unison and vote for Atiku Abubakar on the 16th February, 2019 and ensure that they defend their votes.”
On the state of the nation, the elders “noted the continued drift of the country in the direction of insecurity, deep divisions, tyranny as shown in the recent unilateral sacking of the chief justice of the country against all globally known democratic ethos”, hence the support for an Atiku presidency.
PMB, APC Have Lost All Influences – PDP
Meanwhile, the opposition PDP has declared that Buhari and the APC have lost all the influences on which they rode to power in 2015.
PDP national publicity secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, stated this at a press conference in Abuja yesterday.
He warned against plans to rig the 2019 general elections, stressing that Nigeria is bigger than President Buhari and APC.
Ologbondiyan said that Nigeria’s history as a nation has amply shown that “no individual leader, no matter the authority wielded, has ever succeeded, at any point in time, in subduing the spirit of our nation or place our people under a siege and not even this strange recourse to importation of mercenaries into our country can change that reality.
“The world can recall how certain leaders in the past attempted to subvert our constitutional democracy, arrogate excessive powers to themselves and how they failed in the face of the Nigerian spirit.
“Today, that Nigerian spirit, with which we won our democracy and nurtured it to this stage, is being assailed by the APC and the Buhari Presidency with their unrelenting constitutional breaches, attacks on our democratic institutions, violation of human rights, siege on our electoral system and opening of our territorial borders to mercenaries, all in the bid to subdue our citizenry and achieve a self-succession plan, having realised that there is no way they can win in a free, fair and peaceful election.
“There is a ferocious attempt to take away our liberty as a people. There is total clampdown, arrest and detention of dissenting voices; invasion of media houses, manhandling and illegal detention of journalists by state forces have become the order of the day; but all these will not break the Nigerian spirit.
“Our nation will never succumb to the Buhari Presidency’s assault on our National Assembly, the attack on our judiciary and besieging of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) where President Buhari’s relation is being foisted as the head of the collation centre,” the PDP said.
