Atiku Set To Declare Presidential Bid As Tambuwal’s Campaign Says South Can’t Win. Surprises May Await Old Thinking
The Oasis Reporters
March 22, 2022
Just as Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal of Sokoto State has said the South may be unable to win the 2023 election for the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar is set to announce his bid for the PDP presidential ticket which southern Governors and politicians say it’s the turn of their region.
Speaking on Tuesday during a consultative meeting with former principal officers of the National Assembly in Abuja, Tambuwal said, “you cannot zone what you don’t have”.
Tambuwal and Atiku were amongst the politicians who backed the All Progressive Congress, APC under the banner of the nPDP to crush a humiliating defeat on former president Goodluck Ebele Jonathan for insisting on his right to seek reelection under the PDP as a sitting president.
The nPDP formally joined the then opposition party, APC. They soon fell apart and the ‘rebels’ traced their steps back to the PDP, a party they helped to pull down.
Still, Atiku was offered the presidential ticket to run on, but he lost in 2019 to fellow tribesman, Muhammadu Buhari.
As the APC is wisely mulling plans to hand their 2023 presidential ticket to the South even as sentiments in the South rue that same plan in the PDP to give the pedestal to the South, Atiku gets on the stage to insist that he deserves the ticket on behalf of the north. If that happens and he wins, it may mean that the Muslim Fulanis as a tribe would have had a back to back 16 year reign at the presidency.
Atiku says he has had several months of consultations with stakeholders across the country and in the diaspora, as well as all organs of the Peoples Democratic Party, therefore Nigeria’s former Vice President and presidential candidate of the PDP in the 2019 election, will officially declare his intent to run for the 2023 presidential election on Wednesday, 23 March, 2022.
The event which will have in attendance Atiku Abubakar’s friends, associates, political leaders, party faithful and supporters will take place at the International Conference Centre, Abuja at 11 am.
A statement issued on Sunday by his Media Office said, the official declaration kick-starts the former Vice President’s participation in the race for the presidential ticket of the PDP ahead of the next year’s general election.
It may be recalled that last week, Atiku picked the nomination and expression of interest forms of the PDP, which were donated to him by the North East Business Community, urging him to run for president in the 2023 election.
Meanwhile, governor of Sokoto State, Aminu Tambuwal has advised the leadership of the PDP and other stakeholders to first win the election before zoning it.
The governor also gave an analogy of recent elections to show why it might be difficult for the South to win the presidency for the PDP based on votes cast.
Despite all his analogies, pundits aver that they are incongruous and largely manufactured to induce opinions in favour of northern politicians who seem averse to letting power slip out of their hands and sight for a moment.
To buttress his points, Tambuwal urged the party to be strategic, saying that the All Progressives Congress (APC) took their presidential candidate to Katsina state in 2015 even when the late President Umaru Musa Yar’adua who was in office was also from Katsina.
Tambuwal tasked the party to concentrate on how to win the election, rather than zoning of offices.
But with the hugely smoldering anger of native northerners who have borne the brunt of the dastardly killings, kidnappings and displacements occasioned by largely Fulani bandits, votes in the north may resemble what happened in France which brought Emmanuel Macron to power, eclipsing the country’s traditional parties and southerners may not easily be roused to vote for northern candidates for the presidency this time.