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Mr Osita Okechukwu, Director-General of the Voice of Nigeria (VON), has criticized Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential candidate, for making false claims about the February 25 presidential poll.
In a statement on Sunday in Abuja, Okechukwu stated that Atiku’s desperation and crass opportunism led to PDP’s defeat at the polls, not Mr Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate, as he claimed. He pleaded with Atiku to retire honourably from active politics, instead of playing the sore loser and sulking publicly with false narratives.
Okechukwu wondered what the election results would have been if it was mainly between the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the PDP. He recalled that Atiku had stated at a recent news conference that Obi’s movement to Labour Party took PDP’s votes in South-East and South-South. Okechukwu, who is also a chieftain of the APC, said Atiku allowed his entitlement mentality to cloud his sense of judgment.
Okechukwu further recalled how the former Vice-President brought his opportunism to the APC to challenge President Muhammadu Buhari for the party’s presidential ticket in 2014 on the patriotic premise of rotation convention.
"Now, for Atiku to play the blame game by bellyaching against Mr Peter Obi of the Labour Party who turned out as a hero of the 2023 presidential election is quite distressing."
Okechukwu 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. Nyesom 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.
According to Okechukwu, 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.
He 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.”
Okechukwu said that Atiku had not said the real reason behind Obi’s exit from the PDP as he has contradicted his media aides. He added, "We have heard from the horse’s mouth; it is a crystal case of opportunism that drove the Waziri Adamawa into the presidential race."
