Tinubu takes a swipe at Atiku for playing ethnic card
The All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has responded to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, who stated that Northerners need someone like him from the North to be the next president of Nigeria.
According to Tinubu in a statement by the Director, Media and Publicity of his campaign council, Mr Bayo Onanuga, Atiku’s statement has proven to Nigerians that the former Nigerian Vice President is not a unifier as he claims and that he only pays lip service to national unity.
The statement partly reads, “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.
“Doubling down in his now infamous speech, Atiku said:
‘What the average Northerner needs is somebody who is from the north and also understands that part of the country and has been able to build bridges across the country. This is what the Northerner needs, it doesn’t need a Yoruba or Igbo candidate. I stand before you as a Pan-Nigerian of northern origin.’
“In clear terms, Atiku who stole the PDP ticket, by a similar mindset, has cast himself as a northern candidate, who should solely be supported by the people from his region.
“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.
“As if this cardinal sin was not enough, the PDP candidate has remained defiant in the face of pressure by preserving the two topmost posts in his party for people from his region.
“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.