The Peoples Democratic Party on Sunday said the claim by the All Progressives Congress that the PDP presidential candidate in the February 2019 election, Atiku Abubakar, is a Cameroonian. He explained why the APC-led Federal Government administration has allegedly remained insensitive to the challenge of insurgency, general insecurity and economic travails of Nigerians in the North East, particularly in Adamawa, Yobe, Borno and Taraba states.
The APC, in its defence at the presidential election tribunal had said that Atiku was not a Nigerian but from Cameroon.
But the PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, in a statement, said Atiku’s citizenship was being disputed by individuals whose ancestry had always been a subject of debate.
He added that the claim was a calculated attempt by the APC to trivialise and divert attention from the compelling issue of the alleged APC rigging of the 2019 Presidential election.
He stated that it was also a woeful design by the APC to overburden, distract and bog down the presidential election petition tribunal with trivialities, lies and falsehood, so as to derail the course of justice.
According to him, such diversionary tactic had, however, only helped in further exposing that the APC had no answers to the plethora of presentations by the PDP before the tribunal that Atiku won the election.
Ologbondiyan said, “Whereas Atiku Abubakar’s citizenship by birth, even under our constitution, cannot be contested, it is indeed the biggest irony of the year, that Atiku’s citizenship is being disputed by individuals whose ancestry has always been a subject of debate.
“These individuals include those who, being not sure of their origins; have no love for Nigeria and even refused to be on the side of our nation at the 1985 summit of the defunct Organisation of Africa Unity in Addis Ababa.”He added, “Such persons prefer to deploy our national resources for infrastructural development in affiliated places outside the shores of Nigeria, when our country is in dire need of attention.”