Atiku’s 2023 Presidential Ambition Hits Brickwall? New Revelations Emerge Over Ex-VP Chances
- The former vice president Atiku Abubakar is yet to make a declaration to contest the 2023 presidential election
- Atiku, a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), would slug it out with Saraki, Tambuwal and others to get the party's ticket
- The Wazirin of Adamawa was the presidential candidate of PDP and contested against President Buhari in 2019
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Kaduna, Kaduna - The presidential ambition of a former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, ahead of 2023, is reportedly facing some challenges within and outside the fold of the major opposition party in Nigeria, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Legit.ng gathered that fresh facts reportedly emerged that Atiku's closed-door meeting with his boss, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, ended abruptly.
Source: Facebook
The national chairman of Good Governance Promoters League (GGPL), Adam Musa Isa, told Legit.ng that highly-dependable source close to the meeting between the two leaders at the Presidential Library, Abeokuta, said Obasanjo informed Atiku that he had already told the world that 2023 should be time for young people to take over the democratic space.
Obasanjo may not support Atiku's ambition
He said the sources indicated that Obasanjo told Atiku that he could not go back on his call for older politicians to play advisory roles and leave the stage for younger ones.
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According to him, indications that the 2023 journey would be tough for the Wazirin Adamawa first emerged when former president Ibrahim Babangida hosted Atiku at his Minna residence and refused to even comment on the former VP's 2023 ambition.
Isa noted that Babangida had earlier declared in a viral interview with Arise TV that he had identified about four "young" Nigerian politicians with the better potential of becoming the Nigerian president as he rejected the recircling of old, aged Nigerians as leaders of modern-day Nigeria.
Atiku visits IBB in Minna
According to him, a few weeks after Atiku's visit to former president Babangida's residence, Chief Raymond Dokpesi, Waziri's presidential campaign director met Afenifere leaders to seek their blessings for his principal's 2023 ambition.
He added that a top shot of the Afenifere, Chief Ayo Adebanjo reportedly told Dokpesi openly that he would not support Atiku's ambition, saying, "I won't endorse Atiku because of his( Atiku's) use-and-dump style of politics."
Isa went further to say that shortly after Adebanjo's reported rejection, the political terrain was heated by a floodgate of protests against Atiku's 2023 ambition, simultaneously by almost all the Atiku 2019 support groups across the nation, adding that the southwest states of Lagos, Oyo, Ondo and Ogun protesters asked Atiku to jettison his ambition.
He noted that this was shortly followed by another street protest from Atiku support groups in the south, which went by the name of Southwest Development Frontier (SDF), with huge placards bearing slogans like "Waziri please leave 2023 for a younger person", meant to get him to back down on his ambition.
Isa stated:
"Up north, support groups started by shutting down Atiku's immediate constituency of Adamawa, then other states - notably Kaduna - by a group which went by the name of Coalition of Civil Society for Good Governance and other 2019 Pro-Atiku groups in Plateau and Benue states.
"Also, the Northern Elders Forum(NEF) set out its criteria, which spelled out the quality of leadership that would befit the successor of incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari, showing NEF's preference for "more vibrant, leadership", that is well-grounded in all ramifications.
"On their part, the Coalition of Northern Groups(CNG) and Arewa Youth Consultative Forum(AYCF) earlier advocated for generational power shift in separate public engagements with the nation's media."
He added that the CNG had issued a number of public statements in support of the emergence of young people as leaders in 2023 and beyond, while it took the campaign to all universities in the region and it stepped up the campaign during the late Yusuf Maitama Sule Memorial Lectures series, where it created a critical mass of young men as advocates and potential leaders of the near future, in terms representative democracy, entrepreneurship, and engineering among others.
Most Nigerian leaders want a young person to succeed Buhari in 2023
The national chairman of GGPL stressed that at a recent meeting of the northern elders and opinion leaders at Arewa House in Kaduna sometime in January 2022, the position of the participants was that the young ones should be allowed to take center-stage on the democratic space, to end the worrisome culture of producing leaders above 60 years of age.
According to him, analysts have expressed shock at the dwindling political fortunes of Atiku, seeing how prominent Nigerians who massively supported him in 2019 are now back-tracking in droves, signposting an internal rebellion.
He said though most of the leaders of the mass protests alleged being used and dumped by the Waziri, some stated that the Waziri seldom spends six months in the country as he junkets around the globe doing other things and paying less attention to his political foot soldiers.
Isa stated that the 13 PDP governors have taken a stand that is in sharp contrast to that of the former vice president, who had to secure a court order to affirm he is qualified to even contest in 2023.
He added:
"There is a growing consensus that the dominant quest for young people to take over Nigeria's democratic space in 2023 and beyond has finally nailed Atiku's latest presidential ambition. But pundits think the Atiku support groups' backtracking would compel the former VP to take a new look at his politics in general and review his strategy that now seems to be slowly failing."
FOWN blasts Afegbua over comments on Atiku's presidential ambition
Meanwhile, Legit.ng had previously reported that FOWN flayed what it described as unfounded and malicious contents being developed and bandied around to disparage the person of Atiku ahead of the 2023 general elections.
It was reported that the group's director-general, Ade Bukky, noted that the campaign of calumny embarked upon by a former commissioner of information in Edo state, Kassim Afegbua, is needless going by the basis of his actions.
He said Atiku went through the rigours of electoral processes and was elected Adamawa state governor before the former president Olusegun Obasanjo picked him as his vice president.
Source: Legit.ng
