Mr. Osita Okechukwu, Director-General of Voice of Nigeria (VON), has urged Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential candidate in the February 25 election, to step down honourably from active politics.
He made the request in a statement issued in Abuja on Sunday.
He believes that retiring is preferable to playing the sore loser and sulking publicly with false narratives.
Okechukwu claimed that Atiku’s desperation and crass opportunism, not Mr Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate, was to blame for the PDP’s defeat at the polls.
Furthermore, he wondered what the election results would have been if the contest had been primarily between the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
At a recent news conference, Atiku had stated that Obi’s movement to Labour Party took PDP’s votes in South-East and South-South, Okechukwu said.
He claimed that Atiku, the former Vice President, let his entitlement mentality cloud his judgment.
He wondered why Atiku wanted to deceive Nigerians by claiming that Obi rushed out of the PDP when, in fact, it was his refusal to contest the zoning principle that drove Obi to seek an alternative platform.
Also, Okechukwu recalled how the former Vice President brought his opportunism to the APC in 2014 to challenge President Muhammadu Buhari for the party’s presidential ticket on the patriotic premise of a rotation convention.
”Now, for Atiku to play the blame game by bellyaching against Mr Peter Obi of the Labour Party who turned out as the hero of 2023 presidential election, is quite distressing.
”How can Atiku claim that Obi was scared out by PDP Governors? When it was public knowledge that his huge war chest and competition with Gov. Nyesom Wike of Rivers made PDP’s primary too contentious and corrupt for Obi.
”It was actually Atiku’s opportunism that eclipsed the PDP and halted Obi’s hurricane, the simple truth is that Atiku Abubukar’s opportunism eclipsed the PDP, ” Okechukwu said.
”Here was a man who in 2014 defected to APC, on the patriotic premise that the then president, Goodluck Jonathan, breached the rotation convention between North and South.
”Today, he violently breached the same rotation convention and the constitution of his party with lamentation outcome,” the VON DG said.
According to him, Atiku has not said the real reason behind Obi’s exit from the PDP as he has contradicted his media aides.
He, therefore, challenged Atiku to come clean on whether Obi was truly scared off by PDP governors or as first narrated by his team that he wanted to back Obi, but for Gov. Nyemson Wike’s intransigence.
Okechukwu recalled how in an attempt to defend his breach of rotation convention, Atiku’s team serially argued that he wanted to support Obi, but changed his mind when he learnt that Wike was against micro-zoning the presidency to the South-East.
”We have heard from the horse’s mouth, it is a crystal case of opportunism that drove the Waziri Adamawa into the presidential race,” he said.
He added that with the outcome of the Feb. 25 presidential election, Atiku had not only buried the PDP but also halted Obi’s hurricane that could have extended to the far North.
He said the cardinal question was why Atiku didn’t deploy his huge war chest to back Obi ahead of the presidential election.
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