Following his controversial remarks at an Arewa Town Hall Policy Dialogue in Kaduna on Saturday, the All Progressives Congress, APC, has said the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, will disunite Nigeria and inflict the worst kind of strife if voted as president in 2023.
Atiku at the town hall said, “What the average Northerner needs is somebody who is from the North; he doesn’t need a Yoruba candidate or an Ibo candidate.”
APC National Publicity Secretary, Barrister Felix Morka, in a statement on Sunday, said what Atiku said was a decisive attack on national unity.
“Atiku’s statement is a decisive attack on our national unity. It is beyond the pale for a senior citizen and a former Vice President of the Federal Republic to so brazenly instigate strife and disunity in our country in pursuit of his befuddled political self-interest.
“But it is not surprising coming from a desperate and serial failed candidate for the office of President. If, as Atiku believes, the average Northerner needs a Northern President now, after a Northern President, when will they ever not need a Northern President? What does Atiku think the average Southerner needs? Why is it about what the average Northerner needs, or even what the average Southerner may need?
“Why is it not about what Nigeria and Nigerians need? Nigerians need bold and visionary leadership anchored on a firm commitment to transcendental national unity, over and above ethnic or sectional obsessions. Atiku’s words ring loud of extreme and mindless desperation, and such an extremely desperate man cannot and must not be entrusted with the most important job of President – a job which core duty is that of leading, uniting and working in the best interest of all in an ethno-religious pluralistic society as Nigeria. Our country does not need this kind of highly inflammable rhetoric now or ever.
“What is even more confounding is that this presidential candidate of the PDP has touted himself to be on a mission to unify Nigeria. The cat has finally been let out of the bag of him that pays lip service to unity while working hard to undermine our national unity. Our Northern citizens and patriots know far better than what Atiku thinks, and will not walk down that slippery slope with him.
“Evidently, Atiku seeks to inflict on Nigeria discord and strife of a worse kind than he has inflicted on his PDP. Against the dictates of his party’s constitution on the principle of power rotation between and North and South of Nigeria, Atiku wrested presidential candidacy and left his party in fractious disability.”
Morka, however, said that the APC presidential candidate, Ahmed Tinubu, has a rare and admirable reflection of ethnic and religious diversity, hence, “will enthrone equity, fairness, inclusion, and unity as operating national policy when elected as president in next year’s general election, as we urge Nigerians to do.”
