2023 Presidency: Why Atiku Can’t Get PDP Presidential Ticket – Afegbua

Kassim Afegbua, former campaign spokesman for ex-Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has disclosed why his former principal cannot get the 2023 presidential ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

In a statement issued on Sunday, Afegbua stated that Atiku cannot be the PDP’s flagbearer because he abandoned the party after he lost the 2019 presidential election and travelled to Dubai.

The former Edo Commissioner also berated the former vice president for expressing confidence in winning the opposition party’s presidential ticket.

Afegbua was reacting to Atiku’s comment after a meeting with ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo and the Alake of Egbaland in Ogun State on Saturday.

Atiku had told newsmen that he would declare his intention to run for the 2023 presidential election after meeting with those that mattered in the political scene.

“Have I ever failed to get the ticket? I’m confident,” he had said.

Afegbua added that the opposition party cannot afford to make the mistake of supporting Abubakar for the 2023 presidency because he cannot be trusted.

The former Commissioner advised Atiku to drop his intention to run for President in 2023 and back a younger aspirant from the southern region.

He said: “I read with dismay the statement credited to former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar where he boasted that he would always get the presidential ticket of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP.

“At a time when the former Vice President should be working towards strengthening the structures of the party for more electoral victories, the only thing that bothers him is all about his selfish aspiration.

“It was only in 2019 that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar emerged as the candidate of the PDP at the PortHarcourt convention when it was decided by the Southern aspirants to allow all-northern aspirants to contest the primary election. So the claim that “I will always get the ticket of the PDP”, flies in the face of logic, fact and reality.”

“We cannot afford the mistake of 2019 when Alhaji Abubakar abandoned all his foot-soldiers and sought refuge in faraway Dubai. A true political General ought to secure his troops and return them to the barracks after the war to carry out critical assessment before knowing the next step.

“Rather than borrow a leaf from the Ukrainian President, Zelensky, who has been standing by his Ukrainian nationals, to the extent of carrying AK-47 to the battlefront to secure his country from Russian invasion, Alhaji Abubakar ran away to Dubai and exposed all of us to the threats and intimidation of the monstrous APC in 2019.

“Such a leader cannot be trusted with the responsibility of representing our aggregate interest in the struggle for 2023. No amount of closed-door meetings with former leaders can change the oscillation of the political pendulum in 2023.”