By Gbade Ogunwale, Abuja
Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has carpeted the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) for abandoning governance for petty politics.
Atiku’s reaction was in response to the APC’s taunting statement following Wednesday’s defection of the senator representing Adamawa North district, Elisha Abbo, from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to the APC. The party had also made remarks about Atiku’s purported 2023 presidential ambition.
The former Vice President had contested in the 2019 presidential election on the platform of the PDP but had lost to President Muhammadu Buhari of the APC.
Abbo is believed to be one of Atiku’s political godsons and that the former Vice President had played a key role in ensuring that Abbo got the PDP ticket for the Adamawa North district and his eventually victory in the 2019 elections.
Knocking the APC in a statement by his media office on Wednesday, Atiku said the ruling party has validated the assumption that living condition has remained deplorable because the APC focuses more on petty politics than on actual governance.
The statement, signed by his media aide, Paul Ibe said, “It is preposterous that a political party which has spent the past five and half years launching humongous and unprecedented hardship on Nigerians finds no time to address and apologise to Nigerians for the false promises of change that they made to the Nigerian people, but waste a whole day self-adulating about politicians who have crossed to join the APC.
“That is a very irresponsible thing to do!
Whereas neither the PDP nor Atiku has initiated discussions with anyone on a 2023 presidential run, it is the APC which has busied itself talking about zoning and focusing on rigging the next election.
“For the avoidance of any shred of doubt, Atiku, like many Nigerians who are pained by the downward spiral of condition of the country under the APC government, has preoccupied himself with proffering solution to the myriad of problems the APC has visited on the country and working hard to contribute his quota in strengthening the country’s economy.
“It is evident that the APC has failed woefully on all the major issues it campaigned against the PDP in 2015 from poverty to insecurity; joblessness and high cost of living; national unity to bad foreign image; human rights abuse to economic recessions – issues which if the APC was a serious political party, should be dispensing its energy in resolving.
“But rather than do that, the APC is prancing about feeling good that its stock of membership is upping, while the economic fortune of the country and its people keeps ebbing”.
Atiku charged that focusing on him will not improve the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or take the country out of the current recession.
He added that focusing on him will not create jobs for the youth of Nigeria; neither will it solve the problem of inflation and high cost of food items.
Stressing that making him an object of attack by the APC will not address mass poverty in the land, neither will it address the pervasive state of insecurity in the country, nor unite a nation that has been sharply divided like never before.
Ironically, Atiku was one of the prominent chieftains that defected from the PDP to join the APC during the latter’s formative years in 2014. He had, alongside others, contested for the 2015 presidential ticket of the APC but had lost it Buhari.
Again, he defected from the APC to the PDP in 2017 where he picked the party’s 2019 presidential ticket and lost to Buhari.
