| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
PDP says former Vice President Atiku Abubakar is a drowning man
The ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) slammed former Vice President Atiku Abubakar yesterday, describing him as a “hopeless, drowning and unreliable politician.”The PDP’s unusually hard knock on one of its founding fathers and Action Congress (AC) presidential
candidate in April 2007 general elections came in reaction to media reports credited to Atiku yesterday, in which he castigated President
Umaru Musa Yar’adua and the PDP. The party’s statement in Abuja, signed by its National Publicity Secretary Prof. Rufai Ahmed Alkali said PDP can no longer tolerate verbal assaults from the former Vice President. The statement said, “The attention of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has been drawn to the statement credited to the former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and widely published in Nigerian newspapers of April 6th 2009, in which he made uncomplimentary remarks against our party and President Umaru Yar’Adua-led Federal government. Our instinct has always been to ignore Alhaji Atiku Abubakar whose overtly selfish ambition has left a hopeless politician, susceptible to all forms of miscalculations and misjudgments. However, it appears that the PDP tolerance of him and his cohorts is daily being taken for granted; hence we wish to state as follows:That the former Vice President be reminded that but for the PDP which gave him a platform to emerge first as Governor-elect of Adamawa State and then as the Vice President of Nigeria for eight years, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar would have remained an inconsequential political quantity, whose influence would not have gone beyond his Jada ward in Adamawa State. The former Vice President should therefore be eternally grateful to the PDP and not be consumed in the sojourn of ill fate to disparage a platform without which he would have remained irrelevant.” The party said it is an irony that the former Vice President has suddenly woken up to the realisation that Nigeria does not have a system that can bring brilliant people to leadership when the same system elevated him to the nation’s number two position. PDP wondered if Atiku “deliberately and selfishly slumbered away while he enjoyed the same system,” saying “what a paradox that the same man who sang Hosanna yesterday is today singing crucifice eis —crucify him—at top of his voice.” The statement added that “his attack on the genuine efforts and commitment of the Federal Government on electoral reforms is clearly opportunistic as Alhaji Atiku Abubakar as Vice President of Nigeria for good eight years cannot today be credited with even a single suggestion he made on how to reform the electoral system.” “If the PDP cannot bequeath a good electoral system as Atoka said, is it the AC with its barrage of demi-gods and cult personalities that will? Is it the AC that is bereft of internal democracy? Where is Atiku if we may ask? Is he in the opposition? Which opposition? Is inconsistency a mettle of opposition politics?” The party said it was not surprised that “Atiku now has his eyes in the so-called nebulous mega party having lost grip of the AC with his self serving antics.”
“No doubt, it is a simple admission that even as tattered as the AC is today, the party has slipped off Atiku’s hands,” it added. It stated that Nigerians have come to know Alhaji Atiku Abubakar more than he thinks, adding that “for all his pretences, he is definitely not one of the champions of democracy.” According to the statement, Atiku’s “recent desperation to repair a battered image and bounce back to reckoning has fallen flat in his face, hence his latest remarks which are symptomatic of a drowning man latching unto every available straw for survival.” The party said it is reassuring Nigerians that it is as formidable as ever to withstand any gang-up in any electoral contest. It therefore urged Nigerians “to also beware of the sermons of those who while in position of authority and had the opportunity to reposition Nigeria and its electoral system, abandoned such a noble cause while saddling themselves with selfish political pursuits. Nigerians know whom to trust. Certainly, Atiku Abubakar is not one of them.”
