Northern Elders Forum rejects Atiku’s candidacy few days before election
By Odunayo Odeja
The Northern Elders Forum (NEF) has said the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, is not their choice from the north despite his desperation and antics to make him their consensus candidate.
Speaking to newsmen at the 10th anniversary of the Forum, held in Abuja, a member of the Forum, Alhaji Seidu Baba, said the former Vice President has been scheming to be endorsed as the sole candidate of the North.
In his words, “There was an attempt to cajole and even force the NEF to adopt him (Atiku), shows how desperate he is.
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“It is believed Atiku got wind of his rejection, the reason he failed to show up at the NEF Assembly and could not send any representative,” he said, adding that Atiku has no credentials to be a sole northern presidential candidate.
According to him, the former Vice President had not related to the North as someone, who has respect or cares for the North.
He dismissed the insinuation that the NEF 10th Anniversary was to adopt Atiku as the consensus candidate for the North
He said, “Atiku has not been seen as somebody, who is close to the North because he has not been fair to us, he is somebody having his base outside the North.
“In 1999, during a book launch at Arewa House in Kaduna, Sa’adu Zungur written by Prof. M.A. Yakubu, the current Chairman of INEC, Atiku, as the Vice President of Nigeria, was supposed to be the most Senior political office holder from the North in the Federal Government as at that time but he, at the occasion, condemned all Northerner’s Leaders and Elders.
“In his speech, he told his bewildered audience that the Northern leaders and elders were the people who failed the North and the nation.
“He said they were the ones that had caused the problems. That was the beginning of his problems in the North.
“Secondly, over the last two decades, all the problems that have been happening in the North East (where he claims to have come from), especially Adamawa, Borno, Yobe and the rest, nobody has seen Atiku’s intervention visibly in solving the problems. Even General TY Danjuma had done much more better than him in this respect.
“All the crises that used to happen in either Onitsha or other places in the South East or South West affecting Northerners, he has never gone there to show empathy or give succour to the people who lost their lives and properties.
“His only desperate objective is to become the President of Nigeria, that’s all. That is why in his obsession and carelessness as a Vice President, he came out to challenge the candidature of his Principal, a Military officer and a General, who brought him into the Government from the wilderness.
