Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 elections, Atiku Abubakar has spoken extensively on the presidential aspirations of the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu as well as that of the Labour Party’s presidential flag-bearer, Peter Obi.
He also assured that the PDP National Chairman, Dr Iyorchia Ayu will step down if he (Atiku) wins the presidential election next year.
In an interview on Arise TV on Friday, the former Vice President said: “If the elected president is from the north and the party chairman happens to be from the north, automatically, the party chairmanship should revert to the south. If I am elected the president, automatically, Ayu will step down. There is also a general misunderstanding because PDP is different from APC. In the PDP administration, the south has had the highest number of years when the PDP was in office, so we need to separate these two so that we can be rational in our argument,” he said.
The former VP said that during his campaign in 2007, his “fundamental disagreement” with the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, was because he (Tinubu) wanted to be his running mate and he refused because he didn’t want a Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket
“Remember, I opted out of PDP because of zoning, and together with Asiwaju we formed CAN. Tinubu wanted to be my running mate when I was given the ACN presidential ticket in 2007, but I disagreed and because of that, he switched his support to the late Umar Yar’Adua. That was the parting point.
“The Muslim-Muslim ticket has always been my fundamental disagreement. Nigeria is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation, and there should be a religious balance in our leadership. We are still friends, of course. But that doesn’t mean we won’t have political differences. We have been having political differences ever since we became friends. Nothing unusual about that,” he said.
He also revealed that Obi who was his running mate in the 2019 election didn’t inform him of his intention to declare for president and only did so three days after his (Obi’s) declaration.
“It is very difficult to expect a miracle to happen, simply because Peter Obi is in the Labour Party. After all, they were saying through social media that they had more than one million votes in Osun State. But how many votes turned out for the Labour Party? And then again, mark you, you’re talking about social media. In the north, 90 per cent of our people are not tuned to social media,” Atiku said.
Atiku said he picked the governor of Delta State, Ifeanyi Okowa over the governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike because he believes the former can ‘deliver’.
“The Muslim-Muslim ticket has always been my fundamental disagreement. Nigeria is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation, and there should be a religious balance in our leadership. We are still friends, of course. But that doesn’t mean we won’t have political differences. We have been having political differences ever since we became friends. Nothing unusual about that,” he said.
He also revealed that Obi who was his running mate in the 2019 election didn’t inform him of his intention to declare for president and only did so three days after his (Obi’s) declaration.
“It is very difficult to expect a miracle to happen, simply because Peter Obi is in the Labour Party. After all, they were saying through social media that they had more than one million votes in Osun State. But how many votes turned out for the Labour Party? And then again, mark you, you’re talking about social media. In the north, 90 per cent of our people are not tuned to social media,” Atiku said.
Atiku said he picked the governor of Delta State, Ifeanyi Okowa over the governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike because he believes the former can ‘deliver’.
On his relationship with former Presidential Olusegun Obasanjo, he said he has been talking to the former president and that the only thing he has yet to do was to visit him after his emergence as the PDP presidential candidate.
When asked if he needs Obasanjo’s support, Atiku said: “Why will I not need his support? He was my former boss. Why will I not need his support? Of course, I will need his support. I assume I have it.”