Former Vice President and presidential aspirant of the All Progressives Congress, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, on Thursday kicked against the idea of a consensus presidential candidate for the party.
Abubakar said the issue was dead and buried.
He also offered reason why he returned to the fold of the Peoples Democratic Party after losing the 2007 presidential election, which he contested on the platform of the then Action Congress of Nigeria.
The Turakin Adamawa, who spoke through the Head of his (Atiku) Media Office, Mallam Shehu Garba, explained that he was wooed back into the PDP by late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.
The former Vice President categorically stated that his movement in and out of some political parties in the country so far was based on principles that democratic tenets must be maintained in political parties.
Abubakar explained that after the 2007 presidential election, which was won by Yar’Adua, he (Yar’Adua) agreed that there were anomalies in the PDP and asked him to return to the party with a proviso that he was going to address the anomalies.
Abubakar, regrettably, noted that after the death of Yar’Adua, the PDP went back to its root of not adhering to democratic principles.
According to him: “The late President Umar Yar’Adua had promised reconciliation but the PDP machinery crushed the idea when Yar Adua died.”
Abubakar however boasted that he is the only presidential aspirant prepared and not prompted to serve.
“People have been cajoled to become president and that’s why they perform woefully when they get to office because they were not prepared to be presidents,” he said
He restated his earlier call on President Goodluck Jonathan to address the issue of insurgency properly or have his name in the annals of the history of Nigeria as the first president to lose part of the nation’s territory to the insurgent group, Boko Haram.
He urged the Federal Government to seek international help to curb the menace posed by the Boko Haram sect in the country.
Speaking on how the APC should pick its presidential candidate, the former Vice President stated: “Whoever emerges a winner will be supported by all the other aspirants.
“Consensus is dead and buried; there is a process of emergence through election.
“The country has been governed by people who are unprepared.
“Why is anybody afraid of democracy? If you are afraid of free and fair elections, there is no democracy.”