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Tag: atiku

  • Between Atiku and PDP

    Between Atiku and PDP

    Recently, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Waziri Adamawa and former vice president, re-joined the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).  He called it a come back to the family he helped build.

    Nobody is in any doubt that the ex-vice president plans to contest the presidential election on the platform of PDP. The PDP ruled the country for 16 years, from 1999 to 2015, and lost power to the All Progressives Congress (APC). Atiku’s return to PDP has generated mixed reactions from the APC, PDP and well-meaning Nigerians. He has been vilified, dismissed, called a serial contestant with no electoral advantage and condemned for his ambition. But some have applauded his courage and insight into the nation’s challenges.  This development also seems to bolster the fortunes and electoral chances of PDP as he may end up clinching the party’s presidential ticket.  As a former vice president and two-time presidential aspirant, he is on familiar terrain and possesses the political structure to execute a presidential campaign that can intimidate other parties and their candidates.

    It is, therefore, imperative at this build up period, to analyse the intra-party politics in PDP, which will determine the geo-political zone that gets what in a PDP presidency in 2019.

    A review of positions already occupied by various zones in the last PDP governments will help in the calculations.  In 1999, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, from the Southwest was President, while Atiku, from the Northeast was his vice president. Many, from the Southeast occupied the office of the Senate President.

    Graphically stated:  1999 to 2007 (Obasanjo presidency) –  President – Southwest;  Vice President – Northeast;  Senate President  –  Southeast; House Speaker – Northeast.  (2).  2007 to 2009 (Yar’Adua Presidency -President – Northwest; Vice President – South-south; Senate President   – Northcentral; House Speaker – Southwest. (3). 2009 to 2015 (Jonathan Presidency) – President – Southsouth; Vice President – Northwest; Senate President   – Northcentral; House Speaker – Northwest.

    Although the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation is not an elective position and should not be a major yardstick for measuring federal character and justice in party allocation of sensitive political positions, it has been used to placate zones that cry of neglect.  A critical look at the statistics shows that the Southeast, even with its adoption of PDP as its dominant party, is always passed over in the allocation of prominent positions in 16 years of PDP rule.

    Except in Obasanjo’s era when it got the Senate president, in Yar’adua’s, through Jonathan’s, to Buhari’s, the Southeast was never part of the four foremost positions.  This, indeed, has given credence to the zone’s incessant cry of neglect and call for self-determination.

    To correct this imbalance and sense of alienation in the Southeast, which will be the panacea for PDP’s electoral success in the 2019 presidential election,  the Southeast should be given the vice presidential slot, with a promise to zone the president to it after eight years of Atiku.

    The credible and politically sound allocation of the four most important positions in an Atiku presidency should be as follows: President – Northeast; Vice President – Southeast; Senate President – Southwest; House Speaker – Northcentral.

    A critical factor that supports this assertion will be the consideration that in the APC government of Buhari, the president is from Northwest, vice president from Southwest, Senate president Northcentral, while House Speaker is from Northeast.

    The Southeast and South-south, which the president believes are the strongholds of PDP, were not considered. Not even with the consolatory position of SGF, which Buhari’s supporters in the zones were expecting.

    It is important to commend PDP for their novel decision to elect their national chairman from the South-south, which is now the nucleus of the party.  It is the zone with the highest number of PDP states.  The zonal distribution of the party is as follows: Southwest – one of six states  = 16.6 per cent ; Southeast – three of five states = 60 per cent; Southsouth – five of six states = 83.3 per cent; Northcentral – one of six states = 16.6 per cent; Northeast – one of six states = 16.6 per cent; Northwest – zero of seven states = 0 per cent

    From this data, it is important to note that South-south, with 83.3 per cent, and Southeast, with 60 per cent of states, should be the heartbeat of the party. This was aptly captured during its last convention when it elected its national chairman from South-south.  The zone mainly funds the party and should determine who presides over its affairs.

    Having achieved that at the National Working Committee level, the party should allow other zones to take up other prominent positions, to precipitate a mass exodus into the party to actualise its success in 2019. The coast of success is clearer now than before, especially with the low performance of the Buhari government. The economy has completely crumbled; prices of fuel and other food items have hit the ceiling. Prices in the last 30 months have increased by 300 percent; a sign of bad government.

    Security of life and property is being de-emphasised. Innocent citizens are slaughtered in their homes or farms on a daily basis by marauding ethnic militias a.k.a herdsmen, who have been described as the fourth deadliest terrorist group. They have killed more people in Benue, Taraba, Plateau, Kaduna, Enugu and other states than known terrorist groups.

    Boko Haram has festered more than it did in 2015 when the then publicity secretary of APC Lai Mohamed told a London audience as reported in The Nation of February 25, 2015: “President Jonathan should apologise to Nigerians for allowing the Boko Haram insurgency to fester for this long”. He went say that Jonathan should resign for “underrating the capacity of Boko Haram,” which made him not to defeat them. Now, the question:  If Buhari, a general, has not been able to defeat them, despite the “Boko Haram has been decimated, Boko Haram has been degraded” propaganda; what will Nigerians tell him? He should not only resign, but he should also apologise to Nigerians and refund the money siphoned on the pretence of fighting Boko Haram.

    Buhari overrated his capacity to change things, which he has actually achieved in the contrary. The chips are down; we have seen the difference between propaganda and governance.

    But Atiku will only become president in 2019, if he puts PDP in order by preventing its destruction by extraneous forces, this time around. The Southwest should accept the last PDP convention as it will be in the interest of the party.  A living dog is better than a dead lion.  Southwest should mend fences with all zones working with the National Working Committee to woo back their kith and kin, who are hobnobbing with strange fellows, despots and non-progressives deceptively wearing the garb of democrats.

    Atiku should use his managerial acumen and organisational skills to placate the Southwest and galvanise all zones to re-establish the formidability of the party.  If he sows sparingly, he will reap sparingly or not at all, but if he deploys his enormous economic and social network in revitalising PDP, he will be the ultimate beneficiary.

     

    • Alozie, is a United States-based public affairs analyst.
  • Between IBB and Atiku

    Between IBB and Atiku

    “May your road be rough, may you have a hard time this year” – Tai Solarin (of blessed memory), 1 January 1964

    In this season of emergency messiahs, it is meet to x-ray that Nigerian penchant to chase shadows, when common sense — hardly ever common — dictates you stick to the substance, no matter how grinding.

    Might that have inspired the late Tai Solarin’s iconoclastic wish, quoted as prelude to this piece, as relevant today as it was on 1 January 1964 when it was released, in lieu of the conventional “happy new year”?

    Indeed, may your road be rough!  In there lies any grain of natural progress.

    But most times when that happens, and Nigeria seems at a serious crossroads, a flighty ensemble gallops into town, and with thunderous roar from the dim, start vending fake magic.

    Most times, however, that easy way always forms the root for a future gnashing of teeth, in a vicious merry-go-round.

    Former President Olusegun Obsanjo’s latest fancy, the “non-partisan” Coalition for Nigeria (CN) fits pat into that umpteenth pattern — and Ripples gave his take on the Owu fox’s latest gambit in this column last week.

    Still, that would appear a crescendo to a well-calibrated mirage, masterfully conjured to hook the unwary and sucker the simplistic.  Unfortunately, the Nigerian space teems with such in their millions.

    That brings the discourse to the day’s main menu: between IBB and Atiku.

    To Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (IBB), former self-named “military president” and Abubakar Atiku, former elected Vice President of the Federal Republic, Muhammadu Buhari would appear a constant.

    In Babangida, it is how, after Buhari, a past got so frightfully awry, with a mess that climaxed in 2015; with both IBB and new, self-promoting messiah, Obasanjo, playing more than active roles.

    In Atiku, it is how, again after Buhari, a future could turn so spirally wrong; so much so that it could well nigh be beyond redemption.  Again, an Obasanjo is huffing and puffing; pawning old poison as new elixir.

    During the military era, IBB postured easy comfort, from the Buhari-Idiagbon Grim Republic, after emerging new “military president”, after a palace coup in August 1985.  At the end, he delivered nothing but sweet peril, that forged this present lament.

    Before Obasanjo barged into his party, with his CN Hobson’s choice, Atiku was staking his claim as some rosy future, after Buhari’s grim present — if not a contemporary Nigerian Pericles, the greatest of the Greek old lawgivers, then certainly a Solon, the wisest of them all.

    Indeed, Atiku postured as the latest neo-Fulani progressive-liberal in town, at home with state police (the battle cry of the fringe of those craving a rebirth of Nigeria’s skewed federalism); is comfy with “resource control” (the war cry of the Niger Delta) and absolutely in love with “restructuring” —  the turn-defeat-into-triumph gamble of the Afenifere grandees of the South West.

    In this high-pitch Atiku circus of colourful nothings, you could never lose!  Whoever gains anything from the rainbow of a soap bubble — except the thrill of its final pop?

    Perhaps the “new” Atiku sent Baba Iyabo scampering to his new CN gambit.  Perhaps it was, from the Buhari angle, that eternal panic of being out-shone by anyone in the contemporary Nigerian cosmos, especially on the anti-corruption front, that stampeded Baba into the fray.

    But whatever it was, something is escaping the duo: the high presidential institution they sunk in the mud, by their roforofo fight based on nothing but empty ego, is being restored to its full lofty heights, by quiet grace, by an incorruptible duo.

    With Baba sounding so hollow on the anti-corruption front, “federal character” in presidential appointments is his new game — hardly a crime!

    But back to IBB and Atiku in the Nigerian economic debacle.

    As a University of Ibadan undergraduate in 1984, Ripples never liked the Buhari junta’s political policy.

    The treatment of the ousted politicians was too draconian, back then hallmarking the most vicious face of military rule ever.  The arrests were also lop-sided, with a penchant to punish, just for punishment’s sake.  Thirty-four years after, that impression remains unchanged.

    But not so, the economic policy.  Back then as at now, the thrust was self-sufficiency, no matter how hard at first, to build a real local economy.  But the avant-garde experts back then, pumped full with self-underdevelopment theories, courtesy of their Western teacher-ideologues, balked.

    Buhari lost out.  IBB, charming the gullible — which was about everyone, including the media — sided with these Nigerian “expat experts”, to echo Prof. Wole Soyinka’s sarcastic pun in The Interpreters.

    In the very first week of the structural adjustment programme (SAP) in 1986, the Naira forever(?) crashed as a viable currency.

    That economic debacle, of totally surrendering to imports, while playing yo-yo with the Naira parity, hoping gushing petro-dollars would absorb the shock, had lasted all through military rule (1986-1999), and spanned the 4th Republic Obasanjo presidential establishment (1999-2015).

    Of course, there were “reforms” (that highfalutin jazz word of Obasanjo-era high orthodoxy): some of them critical (like the pension reforms); others laughable (like liberalizing petroleum downstream by refined fuel import); and yet others, trip to ego land, as Chukwuma Soludo’s NEEDS (National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy) which, in full golden triumph, beckoned the states to come up with their own SEEDS; and the local governments, with own LEEDS.

    It was the golden age of empty sloganeering with raucous applause!

    Even when the Buhari Presidency in 2015 changed tack, and instead settled for massive agriculture to power back the local economy, these same “expat experts” pronounced a dire verdict on the new government.

    Yet, less than three years down the line, rice importation, by figures from the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS), is down by 90 per cent.  By year end 2018, according to the same NBS projection, Nigeria should be self-sufficient in rice and most other grains.

    What SAP and Obasanjo era reforms could not even touch in 30 long years, a government delivered in less than three years — and some lobbies still claim that government knows no economics!

    Atiku’s link to IBB?  Simple.  As IBB took Nigeria on an economic wild goose chase 32 years ago, followed by administrations that succeeded him, so would the “new” Atiku take Nigeria to a future economic quicksand, away from the current fast-forming firm grounds.

    If those grounds are consolidated and built upon, a robust economy would logically result, other things being equal.

    And Baba Iyabo and his CN gang?  Just empty drama and vacuous grandstanding — hardly a democratic crime!  But it could well turn vicious distraction, with its parasitic tactics of preying on current pains, only to sell a far worse future anguish.

    That is Nigeria’s current crossroads, with equal opportunity messiahs stalking the gullible.

    But as their past records have shown, over the past 32 years,  theirs is the wide and merry way that leads to perdition, not the straight-and-narrow that leads to salvation.

  • 2019: Northern youths ask Atiku, Lamido to step down for Dankwambo

    2019: Northern youths ask Atiku, Lamido to step down for Dankwambo

    Northern youths under the aegis of Arewa Youths Coalition have called on former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, former Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) National Caretaker Committee, Senator Ahmed Makarfi and former Jigawa State Governor, Alhaji Sule Lamido, to drop their presidential ambition.

    The coalition asked all the presidential aspirants in the PDP to throw their weight behind the Governor of Gombe State, Alhaji Ibrahim Dankwambo.

    The Northern youths said Nigeria needs a young and vibrant leader like Dankwambo who has shown example of what good leadership should be in Gombe State.

    Speaking at a rally to drum support for Dankwambo in Kaduna, on Saturday, the Chairman of the coalition, Comrade Abdullahi Mohammed Jika, said “everybody in the country knows that we are not where we ought to be as a country. That is why we are here to call on Governor Dankwambo of Gombe State to come and contest and rescue our country from the myriad of challenges bedeviling us.

    “We have chosen Dankwambo because we have seen what he has done in Gombe State. He is a detribalised Nigerian. He has solutions to our economic and security challenges and he can move the country to the promised land.

    “Therefore, we are calling on other contenders within the party to put their ambition aside and support Dankwambo with their resources, contacts and everything within their possession, because PDP is one big family.”

     

     

  • Lassa fever: Atiku calls for emergency call desks at health facilities

    Lassa fever: Atiku calls for emergency call desks at health facilities

    Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has advised the Federal Government to establish emergency call desks at strategic health facilities to address the rampaging Lassa fever in the country.

    Abubakar in a statement issued by his Media Office on Thursday in Abuja also advised government to ramp up on the sensitisation of the public about the disease.

    “It is equally important that government partners with the private sector and medical research institutions towards ensuring that vaccines are formulated.

    “They should partner to come out with vaccines that can combat and eventually wipe out some perennial diseases inclusive of Lassa fever which recurrence pose a threat to our public health,” he said.

    Abubakar advised that every household should endeavour to be enlightened about the disease and how to prevent it.

    He warned that the fatality figure on the trail of the outbreak of Lassa fever was becoming alarming, as the disease was spreading across states.

    Recent media reports indicated that the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has recorded 16 fatalities and 107 suspected cases of Lassa fever infection.

    The report also indicated that the disease had spread to 10 states.

    Abubakar, however, sympathised with families who were victims of the outbreak of the disease.

    He expressed optimism that Nigeria would overcome the “fangs of the outbreak just like it did with the dreaded Ebola outbreak.

    “The resurgence of the Lassa fever is unfortunate and it is saddening that some families have lost dear ones to the recent outbreak of the disease,” he said.

    Abubakar applauded the efforts of health workers in stemming the scourge of the disease.

    He noted that they were like soldiers waging a war in which unfortunately some died in trying to save the lives of others.

    “Our health workers who are in the front line of viral and microbial attacks are deserving of our support and recognition.”

    He paid tributes to Drs Abel Sunday Udo, Ali Felix and Idowu Ahmed as well other health workers who were infected and died in the course of treating Lassa fever patients in Ebonyi and Kogi states.

  • Atiku visits Ekiti, Fayose blasts Obasanjo, Buhari

    Atiku visits Ekiti, Fayose blasts Obasanjo, Buhari

    Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar on Wednesday visited Ekiti State where he held talks with the state Governor, Ayo Fayose and leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

    Atiku said he chose Ekiti as first state to be visited, because of Fayose’s role as opposition leader and chairman of the PDP Governors’ Forum.

    He commended Fayose for various projects being executed in the state.

    Atiku said Fayose’s popularity in Ekiti and Nigeria was not in doubt as he has been acknowledged as “frank, bold and straight forward politician.”

    He said: “Since my return to PDP, this is the first state I am visiting to consult with leadership and party members.

    “Governor Fayose and I had struck a relationship during his first tenure and I respect him for this.”

    Atiku also hailed Fayose for nominating his deputy, Prof. Kolapo Olusola, as his preferred candidate for the 2018 governorship election.

    The ex-vice president said he was not in Ekiti for campaign but to consult with party leaders on the way forward.

    But Fayose, himself a presidential aspirant, used the opportunity to throw verbal missiles at former President Olusegun Obasanjo over his latest advice to President Muhammadu Buhari not to seek re-election in 2019.

    The governor alleged that Obasanjo was aggrieved with the President because his (Obasanjo’s) ministerial nominees were rejected.

    Calling Obasanjo unprintable names, Fayose faulted the ex-President’s call for a Third Force as alternative to PDP and All Progressives Congress (APC).

    He maintained that PDP remains the most viable alternative to APC, urging Nigerians to return the party to power in 2019.

    Fayose also blasted Buhari for allegedly inflicting hardship on Nigerians.

    The Ekiti governor said exchange rate has shrunk by 45 per cent under President Buhari whom he accused of doing nothing to stop the recent killing of Nigerians in some parts of the country.

    He said every attempt to muzzle PDP would fail and predicted a landslide victory for the party in the July 14 governorship election in Ekiti.

     

  • Breaking: Atiku ’s son surrenders child to ex-wife

    Breaking: Atiku ’s son surrenders child to ex-wife

    Aminu Atiku, son of former Vice President Abubakar Atiku, has handed over his seven-year-old boy, Aamir, to the child’s mother, Unmi Fatima Bolori.

    Aminu left with Aamir yesterday afternoon, after allegedly snatching the child from his mother.

    The incident occurred at about at 1:59pm, minutes after a Tinubu Magistrate’s Court ordered Bolori to take full custody of the boy and his nine-year-old sister, Ameera.

    Earlier Aminu failed to respond to Bolori’s application for child custody which was argued by her counsel, Gloria Albert-Ekpe (Mrs.) and Ethel Okoh from Festus Keyamo Chambers.

    Read Also: Atiku ’s son escapes with son as court awards wife custody of kids

    In her ruling, Chief Magistrate Kikelomo Ayeye upheld in part, Bolori’s nine-point ‘statement of arrangement’ for both kids.

    It ordered Aminu to pay her N250, 000 monthly for the upkeep of the children, beginning from this month. It also ordered Aminu to carry out medical insurance on the children among others.

    Details later…

  • Cleric charges Atiku to consult God

    Cleric charges Atiku to consult God

    Founder of INRI Evangelical Spiritual Church, Primate Elijah Ayodele, has advised former Vice President Atiku Abubakar to consult God before running for president in 2019

    The primate warned that if the Waziri of Adamawa fails to consult God, he “may not get it right.” The warning was contained in Ayodele’s 2018 prophecies, where he called on Nigerians to be prayerful.

    He also predicted that President Muhammadu Buhari’s aides will create problems for him. Ayodele said Buhari will have to do a lot of alliance to boost his political chances.

    The clergyman also said Nigerians should pray against scarcity of food in the country. Part of the prophecies read: “Bread will be scarce in the country, even garri. Some markets will be shut down, and let’s pray against explosion in some markets.”

    The cleric listed five politicians who are likely to be future president of Nigeria.

    He identified Governor Aminu Tambuwal, Senate President Bukola Saraki, Rotimi Amaechi, Babatunde Fashola and Governor Ibikunle Amosun.

    According to him, “a lot of things will happen in 2018. We see political assassinations, we see killings, we see that we have a lot of issues among our governors. For the presidential election, this is what you should be expecting. The presidential candidate of the PDP will be imposed; he will not be democratically elected after their presidential primaries.”

  • Atiku, Mark want perpetrators of Benue, Rivers, Kaduna killings punished

    Atiku, Mark want perpetrators of Benue, Rivers, Kaduna killings punished

    Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and former Senate President David Mark have joined other Nigerians in condemning the mindless killings in the various communities in Benue, Rivers and Kaduna states during the New Year celebrations.

    Scores of worshippers in Omoku, Rivers State were murdered in cold blood; about 20 were killed in a Benue farming community. A traditional ruler and his household were hacked to death in Southern Kaduna on New Year’s Day.

    In separate statements in Abuja on Wednesday, Atiku and Mark described the killings as unacceptable and urged the security agencies to fish out the perpetrators.

    The reactions are coming on the heels of Wednesday’s Boko Haram suicide bomb attack at a mosque in Gamboru, Borno State which killed scores of worshippers and injured several others.

    Atiku described the killings in those states and other senseless killings and reprisal blood-letting as ungodly, a throwback to the stone age, and a hindrance to the promotion of peace and unity.

    The former Vice President insisted that the diversity of Nigeria remained one of its strongest points, reminding leaders of all persuasions and at all levels to ensure that they promote the things that unite rather than those that create divisions.

    “That the Almighty in His wisdom made us a nation of different tongues and tribes; made us Africa’s most populous nation with more than 300 tribes is no accident. If well enhanced, our diversity should be our biggest strength.

    “There cannot be development when innocent lives are being lost in a seeming endless cycle of attacks and reprisals. While we should hold every life as precious, it is more painful that the victims of these attacks are women and youths – the demography that we depend upon to drive development”, Atiku added.

    Praying for fortitude for the bereaved families, Atiku urged Nigerians to use the opportunity of the New Year to reflect on the needless killings and to resolve to live in peace and harmony.

    Mark said he had taken stock of the renewed violent attacks in the three states and called for urgent and strategic approach to halt further tragedies. He described the attacks reprehensible, barbaric and inhuman.

    The lawmaker lamented the unabated anarchy across the land and urged security operatives to rise up to the challenges and curb the menace.

    He called for working synergy among security operatives to combat the worrisome situation.

    Mark condoled with the governments and people of Benue, Rivers and Kaduna states over the killings and advised them to step up measures needed to protect lives and property.

    “No matter the anger in a man’s mind, resorting to violence or taking another person’s life can only aggravate the situation. There are enough channels of mediation, including the courts and the legislature to address perceived or alleged misdemeanor.

    “Nobody has a right to take another man’s life needlessly. The law must take its course and perpetrators must not go unpunished. This lawlessness must not continue. Security operatives must do the needful to fish out the perpetrators.

    “Nigeria is a nation governed by law where every citizen is a stakeholder and everyone has a right to life.

    “Our governments must stand up for the people. Enough of this malady. We deserve to live in peace in our fatherland,” Mark said.

  • Why Atiku defected from APC, by Ojudu

    Why Atiku defected from APC, by Ojudu

    Presidential Political Adviser Senator Babafemi Ojudu has reflected on former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s defection to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), saying that he left the ruling party because he could not realise his presidential ambition.

    He chided the Waziri Adamawa for twisting facts and wiping up sentiments against the Buhari administration and the All Progressives Congress (APC) for partisan reasons.

    Ojudu said Atiku’s departure was not surprising to the APC, stressing that it was typical of the former vice president to call it quits with a platform that cannot guarantee his bid for the highest office.

    He recalled that Atiku has always destroyed the parties that hosted him by turning around to pull it down, following his inability to clinch the nomination ticket.

    Ojudu spoke on Channels Television’s Sunrise on the implications Atiku’s defection for himself, the PDP and the APC.

    Describing Atiku as a serial defector, the political adviser said the gale of defections peculiar to the eminent politician underscored his desperation for power.

    He said the Turaki Adamawa lied about his marginalisation in the APC, recalling that he often declined to make any constructive and useful contribution during the meetings of party’s founding fathers.

    Ojudu said: “Atiku’s defection is not surprising . During the meeting of the G-19, the Legacy Group that formed the APC, Atiku was there. We laid our programmes as a government before the party leaders and asked for their contributions. He was the only person who refused to talk. The second time the meeting was called, Atiku did not attend. We knew that he will leave. Each time he wants to leave a house, he demolishes the house.

    However, the presidential adviser said it will be myopic to dismiss Atiku as a politician without weight, judging by his status and antecedents in politics.

    Ojudu also said that Atiku has the right to defect under the constitution to seek refuge in any party, despite his constrains and limitations.

    He stressed: “It will be stupid to dismiss his weight. He is an asset to an extent that he stays there. His goal is to be the president. If he cannot get the ticket, he will leave.”

    Ojudu acknowledged the complaint by kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai on the alleged marginalisation of party elders, which Atiku also cited as reason for leaving the APC, saying that the situation has been corrected.

    He said: “There is no perfect organisation and there is no perfect government. The Kaduna governor expressed hos mkind and he has joined others to put things right. You don’t jump out.”

    Ojudu said Atiku was fed up with the APC the moment he failed to get the presidential ticket atv the primary, adding that he is now playing his last card.

    He added: “Atiku is playing his last card. He is desperate to be president. If President Buhari get a second term, he knows that the presidency will go to another region. The presidency will not go to another region. Before it goes back to the North, it may take years and he would have become old.”

    Ojudu also dismissed Atiku’s allegation that the government has not done much for the youths, clarifying that efforts were being made to create jobs in many ways, including massive investment in agriculture.

    He challenged the former vice president to list his contribution to job creation in his native Adamawa State.

    Ojudu queried: “What were the contributions of Atiku to APC’s efforts to rebuild Nigeria? What has he done as a godfather in Adamawa to solve the problem of unemployment. What agenda for youths did he take to the president that was rejected?”

    The political adviser gave the Buhari administration a pas mark, saying that it is a government of planning and anti-corruption.

    He said: “There is planning and there is no siphoning of public funds.”

     

  • Atiku felicitates with Nigerians

    Atiku felicitates with Nigerians

    Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has felicitated with Nigerians, particularly Christian faithful on the occasion of the Christmas celebrations.

    In a statement yesterday by his media office, Atiku described Christmas as a time of love and called on all Nigerians to emulate the essence of the season and unite for the greater good of the country.

    The statement said: “Let us also remember our fellow citizens, the men and women of our Armed Forces, many of whom lost their lives this year fighting to protect us from terrorists and other threats to our national security. We ought to also spare a thought for our brothers and sisters who faced and are facing perils in Libya and the Mediterranean Sea.

    “Nabi Isa (Jesus Christ) taught that it is more blessed to give than to receive. So this Christmas, spare a thought for what you can give back to Nigeria.