“Accept defeat”- APC tells Atiku
Comment
In what it said was a piece of advice, the All Progressives Congress, APC, on Monday, urged the former Vice President of Nigeria and Presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar, to accept his defeat as an elder statesman and bid farewell to hopes of truncating President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Administration as Nigeria’s President.
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This was shortly after the standard bearer of the PDP in the Feb. 25, 2023, presidential election which produced Tinubu as winner and incumbent president, staged a press conference which he (Atiku) said was to avail him a platform to address serious national issues.
Reacting to the news conference and giving the advice, the National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Mr Felix Morka, in a statement issued on Monday in Abuja, described Atiku’s address as a long, windy, incoherent and prepesterous speech unbefitting of a former vice president.
Morka said: “Still bemoaning his electoral loss, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, PDP’s presidential candidate, earlier today, staged a press conference.
“At which he delivered a long, windy, incoherent and preposterous speech unbefitting of a former Vice President.
“Atiku regurgitated his illusory claim that President Bola Tinubu did not win the Feb. 25, 2023, presidential election at the news conference.”
He noted that Atiku’s allegations that the election was characterised by irregularities was roundly dismissed by the Presidential Election Petition Court and the Supreme Court as unsubstantiated and unproven.
The APC spokesman further noted that nowhere in Atiku’s speech did he state that he won the election and therefore held that the Vice presidents’ omission corroborated the court’s findings and decision that he did not, in fact, win the election.
“It is delusional for Atiku, and his party to have expected the courts to rely on their bogus, flimsy, unverifiable, uncorroborated claims,” he said.
Morka said that the courts could not have relied on Atiku’s “illogical and hearsay evidence to upturn an election that was conducted in substantial compliance with the Constitution and electoral laws of our land.
“For a serial election loser, whose life ambition is to rule the country, we understand how pained and utterly distraught Atiku must be.
“However, to continue to deny and disrespect the collective will of Nigerians, disparage the judiciary, incite rage and call our democratic institutions into question is beyond the pale,” Morka said.
He wondered why it was so hard for the former vice-president to accept the popular choice of the electorate and the valid decisions of the courts.
The APC publicity secretary also wondered if Atiku would have vilified the judiciary as he was currently doing if he had won the election and was upheld by the courts as winner.
Morka added that as rightly pointed out by Atiku at his news conference, the issues at stake were not all about him, but about the country.
He maintained that Nigeria was greater than Atiku’s unrealised ambition to be president, stressing that Nigeria must move and had moved on.
“Regrettably, you missed the opportunity of your press conference to redeem your prestige as an elder and statesman by rising above political pettiness and offer befitting congratulations to President Tinubu on his electoral victory.
“Rather than vindicate you, history will not forget your unwillingness to put the country first and above your personal political ambition,” Morka stated.
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