The Presidency and the All Progressives Congress, on Monday, knocked the Peoples Democratic Party presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, following his allegation that the Supreme Court rewarded illegalities by upholding the victory of President Bola Tinubu in the February 25 presidential poll.
Atiku, who addressed a press conference in Abuja on Monday, formally reacted to last week’s judgment of the apex court, which dismissed his lawsuit to challenge Tinubu’s electoral victory.
But in its reaction to Atiku’s attack on the President and the apex court, the Presidency took a sharp jab at the former Vice President, saying he went into the February poll “with a fragmented and tattered umbrella.’’
The Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, stated this in a statement titled: ‘Time for Atiku Abubakar to finally go away and end his ambition to be President.”
Onanuga added, “There was no way Atiku and the PDP could have won the election with the party platform under which he contested broken into four parts.”
Onanuga, said, “Atiku’s brand of politics is such that once an electoral process or election does not pave the way for his victory, democracy becomes dysfunctional and must, therefore, be imperilled.
“For him, democracy should either go his way or the highway. The PDP candidate said Nigeria is doomed just because he failed to achieve his ambition. We want to tell Alhaji Atiku that it is only his inordinate ambition to be President that is doomed.”
The Presidency added, “Our institutions must also ensure that corrupt, desperate, self-serving serial losers should not have a space in our democracy. Because if they don’t win the battle, they might burn the nation. We want to advise Atiku that after over three decades of elusive bid for the Presidency of Nigeria, he must now end his unprofitable bid and go away from any venture that will further pollute the political atmosphere and national harmony.”
Also, the National Secretary of the APC, Senator Ajibola Basiru, slammed Atiku, describing him as desperate.
Basiru said, “First, Nigerians need to sympathise with Atiku Abubakar. It is obvious that he is suffering from post-election trauma, going by the statement he gave. How can you grant two world press conferences in three weeks? He had one preceding his misadventure at the Supreme Court, where he pressed to submit fresh evidence and after his loss at the apex court. This shows that his level of desperation has affected his psychological composition.
He said Atiku’s attack on the judiciary because he lost an election showed he did not have regard for the same institution he approached for redress.
“What he said in the statement also showed that he lacked understanding of how the judiciary works and the electoral process in the country. For instance, he said INEC ought to disqualify people when they submit inconsistent credentials. Surprisingly, even as a presidential candidate, Atiku does not know the law has been changed since 2011. INEC does not have the power to disqualify anybody on any ground.”
“The National Assembly had PDP majority members when the law was amended. In the past, INEC had the power to disqualify anybody when they didn’t meet the requirement. But the law has changed since the PDP-led administration and control of the National Assembly. So, Atiku is blaming INEC for what the legislators and his political party had done.
“Again, the fresh evidence he is talking about, it is possible he didn’t listen to what the Supreme Court said. The court said that since you didn’t plead forgery, you cannot bring evidence to discuss it. Paragraph 146 of his petition stated that the second respondent was not qualified. He didn’t mention anyone in particular. Does he want the Supreme Court to accept evidence of a case not pleaded? His lawyer perhaps didn’t tell him that any fact not pleaded amounts to no issue.’’
