Tinubu tells Atiku to return to Dubai if you don’t accept result of Presidential poll
President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, has charged Presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, to return to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), if the outcome of the elections as declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was unacceptable to him.
Tinubu was angered by a joke by PDP candidate at a press conference that a drug baron had won the Nigeria’s presidential election.
Atiku at a press conference in Abuja on had made reference to a foreign newspaper, which reported that a drug baron had won the Nigeria’s presidential election.
He added he shared the joke with PDP national chairman, Senator Iyorchia Ayu, on his way to the press conference.
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Displeased, Tinubu in a statement by his campaign spokesperson Mr Festus Keyamo, SAN, told the former vice-president to return to Dubai if he would not accept the outcome of the election as declared by INEC.
“In the typical fashion of the last kick of a dying horse, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar this evening addressed the Press and claimed that the 2023 Presidential Election was neither free nor fair. He made this bogus claim without providing a shred of evidence, except to trumpet the noise made by his supporters on social media. He also went ahead to make unfounded derogatory comments about the person of the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu in obvious bitterness and frustration,” the statement said.
“Alhaji Atiku Abubakar should be thankful that he even exceeded expectations in the elections by coming 2nd; with all the distractions and fractured party with which he campaigned he must have sensed beforehand that he was headed for a humiliating defeat that should have put him a distant 3rd or 4th in the elections. His performance was therefore the best he could achieve.
“If Atiku Abubakar is not embracing the olive branch extended to him and other losers in the 2023 elections by the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the least he can do is to quietly relocate to Dubai which has become his traditional home base.”
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The Tinubu campaign spokesman said Atiku and his PDP lost the election upon the reported violation of the zoning principle.
According to him even after emerging as a candidate, the PDP continued to rub insult on the faces of southern leaders in the Party by insisting on keeping the position of National Chairman in the North.
“This obviously led to the rebellion of the G5 Governors and their subsequent sabotage of the PDP before the polls and at the polls by campaigning against Atiku’s candidature. His failure to unite his party and manage this post-primaries fall-out was his eventual undoing,” Tinubu said.
He said Atiku’s bid for the Presidency this time around was dead on arrival “when his inordinate ambition fractured his party into three parts, with Alhaji Rabiu Kwankwaso and Mr Peter Obi breaking away to the New Nigeria Peoples Party NNPP and the Labour Party respectively.
“The massive loss he suffered in traditional PDP zones and States is a clear testament to this. One wonders, then, how he expected to have won the election. It is also comical to see that he claims victory at the polls together with Mr. Peter Obi with whom his party has been holding Press Conferences.
“Nigerians have since seen through the ambition of Atiku Abubakar that it is merely self-serving. Hence, he has run for Presidency at every point in time in the last 30 years, irrespective of the zoning tilt of the nation. Following his successive failures and rejection by Nigerians in different elections, it should be clear to him by now that he is simply unelectable. The expositions relating his self-confessed mode of syphoning public funds whilst in office through SPVs further dented his aspiration before Nigerians.”
