An All Progressives Congress, APC, chieftain, Osita Okechukwu, has urged former Vice President Atiku Abubakar to step aside from the 2027 presidential race and embrace the role of a statesman.
The APC chieftain is arguing that Atiku’s decision to contest the 2023 presidential election against the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, zoning arrangement weakened the opposition and Nigeria’s democracy.
Okechukwu made the appeal while speaking on Arise Television’s Prime Time on Monday.
According to him, Atiku’s emergence as the PDP presidential candidate in 2022, despite calls for the party to zone its ticket to the South, triggered a crisis that continues to affect the party.
“I’m talking in the interest of our country. His Excellency Atiku Abubakar, a man I respect a lot. He was very close to some of my big brothers, the late Dubem Onyia and late Chuba Okadigbo. I’ve great respect for him.
“And what I’m appealing to him is that he should consider the interest of Nigerian State, our fledging democracy.
“About three years ago he (Atiku) did the same thing by breaching the rotation convention, and the collateral damage is heavy.
“Heavy in the sense that, luckily for the Nigerian state, democracy remained, the country remained, but the destabilisation of the PDP had its own collateral damages that it cannot be quantified.
“In fact, the damages got to his backyard because if in 2022 he had acted a statesmanship, which I’m pleading with him, it’s not too late to become a statesman in a country like ours.
