For throwing jibes at Labour Party’s presidential candidate Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, on Saturday, incurred the wrath of the Peter Obi Support Network (POSN), which mocked him as a “seventh-time presidential aspirant.”
Atiku, the former vice president of the country, had, during an interview with Arise TV News monitored by theliberationnews, said Obi, an erstwhile governor of Anambra State, could not win the 2023 presidential election because the Labour Party did not have any governor elected on its platform and did not have National Assembly members.
His words: “I really don’t expect the Labour Party to take much votes from the PDP as people are speculating. They have no structure at all levels, with no governor, and lawmakers.
“It will take a miracle for Labour Party with no structure in the grassroots to win the election. They had said through the social media they have one million votes in Osun State but how many votes do they have in real life?
“In the northern part of the country, about 90 per cent of people don’t have access to the social media. Most of the electorate are not on social media.”
POSN, in a statement released by its spokesperson, Sani Altukry, titled, ‘Atiku Abubakar takes Nigerian masses for granted’, said Atiku in the “recorded interview”, gave unsolicited and clearly erroneous political consultancy on who could win elections and who could not win.
Altukry said, “The seventh-time presidential aspirant reportedly claimed that today’s most popular presidential candidate, Peter Obi, cannot.
“Unfortunately, the former Vice President based his entire permutation on the assumed influence of corruption promoting and vote-buying mercenaries euphemistically called political structure, and failed to consider the unassailable powers of the masses of Nigeria, who actually are the most powerful force in a democracy and the key determinants of election victory.
“As every political philosopher knows: sovereignty resides with the people! Alhaji Atiku Abubakar’s assertion speaks to the illusions of the fascist school of thought that believes that the masses do not matter and erroneously believes that the masses cannot think for themselves.
“In essence, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar is saying that Nigerians are some kind of slaves who cannot take a political decision on their own, except as imposed on them by their slave masters.
“This erroneous idea belongs to the past, and so we assure the former Vice President and those of his class who hold such derogatory perception of Nigerians that a new Nigeria is here and Nigerians are ready to take their destiny into their own hands.
“The Peter Obi candidacy is not a mere political project but a national movement for the reawakening of Nigerians to take their destiny in their hands and break the chains and shackles for which they are derided as being ‘sub-citizens’ with the so-called structure being the deciders of where their votes shall go.
“We are banking on the votes of the millions of dissatisfied but genuinely patriotic Nigerians who want to see a truly independent, prosperous and thriving democratic Nigeria. And every day, as we move from community to community, from market to market, from mosque to mosque and from church to church, we are encouraged by the passion displayed by these Nigerians for a new, working and productive Nigeria under the leadership of Mr. Peter Obi and Senator Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed.
“We expected that the former Vice President, having confirmed the undeniable competence, integrity and wide acceptability of Mr. Peter Obi, that he would demonstrate his true love for Nigeria and a genuine desire for her progress by dropping his ambition to be President of Nigeria and endorse Mr. Peter Obi who has shown practical readiness and preparedness to retrieve Nigeria from the precipice of total collapse.
“We trust that Alhaji Abubakar will read the handwriting on the wall and do the needful.”
