Former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, has described the President Bola Tinubu-led All Progressives Congress (APC) administration worse than military dictatorship.
Atiku spoke at the launch of a book, The Loyalist, written by the National Publicity Secretary of the African Democratic Party (ADC), Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, in Abuja yesterday.
Atiku, the 2023 presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), maintained that the Tinubu government is the worst he has ever witnessed in his four decades in Nigeria politics.
While assuring Nigerians that the future of the country rests on the opposition coalition party, ADC, Atiku said: “We have a unique opportunity within the ADC as a political party. It is a convergence of various political leanings across the country, united in an effort to reunite Nigeria and renew our democratic journey.
“If there is anything positive in our recent political development, it is this coming together to rescue the country from what I consider the worst administration I have witnessed in nearly four decades of political life.
“Not even the military dictatorships before 1999 damaged our national life and consciousness in the way this administration has done. Many of us here were part of the formation of the APC.
“Unfortunately, what we believed would rescue the country has not happened. Just as we once took responsibility to come together and form a political alternative, we must again come together to ensure the emergence of a new political organisation capable of salvaging this country for the benefit of its people,” he said.
Speaking earlier, the former governor of Osun State, Rauf Aregbesola, warned both President Tinubu and the ruling party to stop deceiving themselves thinking they will win the forthcoming 2027 presidential election with the number of governors that have defected to the APC.
While mocking him that APC governors cannot save him, the former Minister of Interior quipped that despite President Tinubu’s hold on Lagos, he still lost in his ward, and the state.
His words: “I still want to say something more. Something is going on that is worrisome, especially for those of us who are Democrats or aspire to be general Democrats. The fact that certain governors are defecting to the APC shows that our unity (ADC leaders) is weakened. I laugh because recent statistics in Nigeria, based on the last election, do not support this belief. In the past, to quit the government and the federal social, let them commit to a free and fair electoral process. We will then see if it is true.
“The second point is a scenario where I want to use results from two zones—just two zones—to show that when a party controls a state, it may not necessarily translate to votes. I want to use the results from the South West and South East.
“In the South West, the APC controlled all the states except one. Despite this, the maximum performance of the party in that election was 55 per cent, with the other parties sharing the rest.
“The same applied in Lagos. The APC candidate lost his ward, local government, and state. So, please, for goodness’ sake, when it is claimed that governors win elections against the people’s will—where? That is the South West.
“In the South East, the result is even more striking. The APC had only 5.8 percent of the total vote from that zone. I’ll stop at that. The results of these two zones clearly show that governors do not win elections—the people do.
“What we require from the government in charge of the election is a commitment to a free and fair process. So first, commit yourself to a free and fair election, and let us see what the result will be. That is what we are asking,” he said.
Credit: The Sun