PDP Presidential Candidate, Atiku Abubakar
Eko Hot Blog reports that Tinubu/Southwest Media Veterans Support Group, a group backing the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, has tackled Mrs. Titi Abubakar, the wife of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate over recent comments.
While speaking at a campaign tally in Ondo State on Wednesday, Mrs. Abubakar, an indigene of the state, had appealed to residents to vote for her husband in the 2023 presidential election, describing him as one of them.
But in a statement issued by the pro-Tinubu’s group’s spokesman, Femi Odere, on Saturday, it rejected the former vice president’s wife’s characterisation of her husband as one of the Yoruba people.
The Tinubu/Southwest Media Veterans Support Group urged Mrs. Abubakar not to treat Atiku’s candidacy in relation to his ethnicity with levity, alleging that it offends the sensibility of the Yoruba and southern Nigeria in general.
The group argued that it is unconscionable that the PDP candidate is seeking to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari, a fellow northerner and Fulani.
“The attention of the Tinubu/Southwest Media Veterans Support Group has been drawn to the statements made by Mrs. Titi Abubakar, wife of former vice president Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate and the candidate himself when both of them spoke in Akure, Ondo State during the kickoff of the latter’s campaigns in the southwest on Wednesday,” the statement reads.
“In her statement, Mrs. Abubakar appealed to the Yoruba to vote for her husband because he would ‘not harm anyone’ as he’s ‘an exposed Fulani man’ whom she has been with ‘for over 50 years’ and has not killed the children she had for him.
“The former vice president on his part said his starting his campaign rally in the Ondo State capital was ‘deliberate to appreciate’ what the people did for him “in the last election’ and as a result, would provide enough funds ‘for the education sector to grow, especially university education.’ Atiku said he would set aside a princely ‘sum of $10 billion for youth empowerment if elected’ as well.
“While we particularly commend Mrs. Abubakar’s statement for her husband on the campaign trail in Akure as a nice try, it also behooves us to tell her to stop the levity with which she’s treating Atiku’s candidacy in relation to his ethnicity because it offends the sensibility of the Yoruba in particular, and southern Nigeria in general.
“It still beggars belief why Atiku Abubakar, a northerner and Fulani, thinks he can intentionally and recklessly violate the time tested conventional wisdom of the country’s rotational principle and get away with it in his expectation that he would be voted to victory to succeed President Muhamadu Buhari, another northerner and Fulani.
“The Yoruba sees his candidacy as the highest height of crass insensitivity, vacuous condescension and reckless impunity that cannot be allowed to stand by the voters of the geopolitical region in the February 2023 election.
“In a normal clime, the Waziri Adamawa would not record a single vote to his credit in southern Nigeria, not to talk of the southwest because of his egregious violation of this zoning formula. We therefore insist that Atiku’s ethnicity is a major problem that Mrs. Titi Abubakar should stop glossing over.
“It is laughable that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar said he would provide enough ffunds’for the education sector to grow, especially university education’ and that he would set aside a ‘sum of $10 billion for youth empowerment if elected.’”
The Tinubu/Southwest Media Veterans Support Group also accused Atiku of running for president to enrich himself.
It invoked a special report by a US Senate Committee on Foreign Corruption, which fingered the PDP presidential candidate in alleged money laundering. (Atiku has denied any wrongdoing on several occasions.)
“At this juncture, it is meet and proper to remind the electorate that Atiku’s overarching purpose of staying relevant in the country’s politics and electioneering campaigns at every turn is to continue to use our collective wealth to feather his personal financial nest,” the group said.
“To buttress this point, we’re not going to get into what former President Olusegun Obasanjo said in his book about Atiku’s uncontrollable predilection for malfeasance, neither is it necessary to remind him that one of his wives (Jennifer Douglas) helped him to launder $40 million of ‘suspect funds’ while she’s living in the United States, according to a special report by a US Senate Committee on Foreign Corruption.
“What we’re anxious about is to draw the attention of the Nigerian electorate to a 2005 email from the president of Atiku’s university, perhaps intercepted by the United States Congress when Atiku was also being investigated with William Jefferson, a US Congressman from Louisiana who eventually served time. The email says, inter alia, that “the flow of revenue to the university will slow dramatically if Atiku’s political fortunes continue to wane.”
“We can now see why Atiku must remain politically relevant either by hook or crook for the rest of his life. So much for someone who would provide enough funds for the education sector and youth empowerment. What about the PTDF saga to the $2.8 million Siemens bribery scandal? Atiku’s evidence of kleptomaniac predilection is simply inexhaustible.
“What this shows is not only enough evidence of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar’s morbid fascination for stealing, but it’s also proof positive that whatever monies that cannot be stolen by the Waziri Adamawa has not been minted. This and other reasons that cannot be sufficiently exhausted here are why the PDP presidential candidate must be outrightly rejected at the polls in 2023.”
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