Former Aviation Minister and one of the spokespersons for Tinubu/Shettima Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, has said the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Alhaji Abubakar Abubakar, can not speak for the Northen region on the choice of presidential candidate to vote in the forthcoming general elections.
Chief Fani-Kayode said the country is in need of a Nigerian President and not a Northern President.
The former minister was reacting to a controversial remark made by Atiku during the Arewa town hall policy dialogue in Kaduna on Saturday.
In a viral video of the event, Atiku said: “What the average Northerner needs is somebody who is from the North; he doesn’t need a Yoruba candidate or an Ibo candidate.”
Reacting to the statement Sunday in Abuja, Fani-Kayode described Atiku as “a dying breed who still sees things from a regional, ethnic and religious prism.
“Nigeria has moved on from that and she deserves better. Our nation will not accept an ethnic bigot and tribal champion as their President.
“Atiku Ibn Dubai does not speak for the North, he speaks for his deluded and blind PDP supporters and his PCC.
“Nigeria does not need a Northern or Southern President, she needs a Nigerian President and Bola Ahmed Tinubu is that President.”
According to the former minister, most northerners do not believe this and thankfully they, unlike Atiku and members of his divided party do not see Southerners as slaves and they regard us all as being equal.
“We will not allow Atiku to do to us what he did to Wike. We will not be cheated or denied.
“It is time for power to shift to the South and an overwhelming number of the people in the North and certainly all the Northerners in the APC believe that. They recognise the fact that if we want our nation to continue to enjoy peace and remain united into the distant future. We must be fair in our dealings with one another.”
Also reacting in a separate statement, Director, Media & Publicity
Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council, Bayo Onanuga, said the APC PCC viewed “Atiku’s public declaration which framed him as an ethnic and regional champion as unbecoming for a man who was once a Vice-President of Nigeria.
“This clearly demonstrates 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.
“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.
“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.”
While criticising Atiku for allegedly preserving the two topmost posts in his party for people from his region, the statement said Atiku has himself, not anybody else, to blame for his expected electoral misfortune.
“The Nigerian public now know 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.
“He is demonstrably the anti-thesis of a pan-Nigerian politician. Nigerians of goodwill, who, daily, seek a united and prosperous nation, should reject Atiku and his party at the polls next February.”