Atiku’s speech ‘worst expression of ethnocentric opportunism’ – Onanuga

The All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council, on Sunday, berated the Presidential standard bearer of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, saying his recent incitement of Northerners to snub Igbo and Yoruba candidates has exposed his true intention to Nigerians.

This was contained in a statement signed by the Director, Media and Publicity of the Presidential Campaign Council, Bayo Onanuga.

Atiku had caused a stir on Saturday at the interactive session of the Arewa Town Hall Policy Dialogue in Kaduna State when he claimed Northerners should bank on a president who hails from the North.

Atiku, an indigene of Adamawa in the north-east, told an audience of Hausa and Fulani people not to bank on an Igbo or Yoruba for president but someone from northern extraction.

He said, “I know the whole of this country. I have built bridges across this country. I think the average northerner needs somebody from the North, who also understands the other parts of Nigeria and who has been able to build bridges across the rest of the country.

“This is what the northerner needs. He (a northerner) doesn’t need a Yoruba candidate or an Igbo candidate. This is what the northerner needs.

A livid Onanuga on Sunday described Atiku’s speech as the “worst expression of ethnocentric opportunism ever uttered by a former Vice President.”

He said the PDP standard bearer’s speech clearly demonstrated how low a man honoured with the second highest office of the Nigerian Constitution is willing to sink in search of a perennial wild goose chase after the highest office in the land.

The statement read, “It confirms the argument that Atiku has feasted on such base, cheap, primordial sentiments to use the masses and the elite of the North as the ladder to ascend to power since 1989 without any dividends to show.

“In clear terms, Atiku who stole the PDP ticket, by a similar mindset, has cast himself as a northern candidate, who the people from his region should solely support.

“We view Atiku’s public declaration which framed him as an ethnic and regional champion as unbecoming for a man who was once a former Vice-President of Nigeria.

“But we are not surprised by his desperate position. Atiku has resorted to whipping up ethnic sentiments, knowing that his chances of being elected have become a mirage.

“He has himself, not anybody else, to blame for his expected electoral misfortune. First, he broke the fundamental rules of power rotation in his party and the country.

“The Nigerian public now knows better that a man who has been campaigning as a so-called unifier of our disparate groups, is a tribal jingoist, who has now totally eviscerated all pretensions to being a detribalised Nigerian.

“Atiku only pays lip service to national unity, despite that it features as one of the five cardinal points of his so-called “Covenant with Nigerians”. The facade is over, he is now fully naked before the Nigerian people.”