Atiku’s Speech “Worst Expression Of Ethnocentric Opportunism Ever Uttered” – Onanuga

Atiku Abubakar
Atiku Abubakar

The All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council has criticized the People’s Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar over his recent encouragement of Northerners to snub Igbo and Yoruba candidates.

Disclosing this in a statement on Sunday, the Presidential Campaign Council’s Director of Media and Publicity, Bayo Onanuga claimed that Atiku’s statement revealed his true intentions to Nigerians.

Atiku had caused a stir on Saturday at the interactive session of the Arewa Town Hall Policy Dialogue in Kaduna State when he claimed Northerners should bank on a president who hails from the North.

The former vice president, an indigene of Adamawa in the north-east, told an audience of Hausa and Fulani people not to bank on an Igbo or Yoruba for president but someone from northern extraction.

However, a livid Onanuga in the statement, described Atiku’s speech as the “worst expression of ethnocentric opportunism ever uttered by a former Vice President.”

He said the PDP standard bearer’s speech clearly demonstrated how low a man honoured with the second highest office of the Nigerian Constitution is willing to sink in search of a perennial wild goose chase after the highest office in the land.

The statement read, “It confirms the argument that Atiku has feasted on such base, cheap, primordial sentiments to use the masses and the elite of the North as the ladder to ascend to power since 1989 without any dividends to show.

“In clear terms, Atiku who stole the PDP ticket, by a similar mindset, has cast himself as a northern candidate, who the people from his region should solely support.

“We view Atiku’s public declaration which framed him as an ethnic and regional champion as unbecoming for a man who was once a former Vice-President of Nigeria.

“But we are not surprised by his desperate position. Atiku has resorted to whipping up ethnic sentiments, knowing that his chances of being elected have become a mirage.

“He has himself, not anybody else, to blame for his expected electoral misfortune. First, he broke the fundamental rules of power rotation in his party and the country.

“The Nigerian public now knows better that a man who has been campaigning as a so-called unifier of our disparate groups, is a tribal jingoist, who has now totally eviscerated all pretensions to being a detribalised Nigerian.

“Atiku only pays lip service to national unity, despite that it features as one of the five cardinal points of his so-called “Covenant with Nigerians”. The facade is over, he is now fully naked before the Nigerian people.”