Abuja/Kaduna — Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar yesterday said he has joined forces with two presidential candidates from the north, Governor Ibrahim Shekarau of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and Mallam Nuhu Ribadu of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).
The trio said they are joining forces to ensure that President Goodluck Jonathan does not emerge victorious in the forthcoming presidential election.
They spoke on a programme on the Hausa Service Voice of America (VOA) monitored in Kaduna yesterday. They said President Jonathan was unfit to continue to rule Nigeria.
Atiku said it would be wrong for Nigerians to accept President Jonathan for the 2011 election because he was not prepared for leadership and had no political ideology.
He said Nigeria has been pushed into a very bad situation and that a Jonathan presidency will continue to see Nigerians the worse off.
Shekarau lashed out at the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) describing it as a corrupt party.
He urged Nigerians to demand from the PDP what it has done with the huge amount of money said to have been expended on electricity in Nigeria, while millions of Nigerians are still in darkness.
Meanwhile, Atiku yesterday rejected insinuations that he had a hand in the chains of events that led to the forced resignation of the former National Chairman of the PDP Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo.
A statement by his campaign organisation said: "The former Vice President could not have been responsible for Nwodo's downfall when he (Atiku) himself was a direct victim of the former chairman's insincerity, double standard, opportunism, selfishness and mischief."The erstwhile chairman delivered the convention to the President but they still went on baying for his blood. That tells you there was more to it than the eye could see. Someone wants blood and you give him palm oil. Does that satisfy him?" the statement contended.
Atiku in the statement recalled that a few weeks to the convention, Nwodo did everything to frustrate Atiku's presidential ambition by making impossible a meeting intended to discuss the modalities of how the January 15, 2011 convention was to hold.
"Nwodo did not agree to meet or even answer phone calls for upwards of two months now. He frustrated every meeting my campaign organisation had requested to discuss serious issues that border on free and fair election, especially the need to create a level-playing ground in which no delegate would feel constrained or intimidated to choose their preferred candidate".
The statement said Nwodo caused crises across the country in many chapters of the party, including Enugu State, where he and Governor Sullivan Chime were engaged in a bitter battle of supremacy.
"It is clear that the former chairman had enough home troubles to contend with," Atiku furthered maintained....
As for the issue of Atiku's return to the party and subsequent waiver granted him to run for the party's ticket, the campaign organisation said the then chairman and the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party were confronted with a fait accompli since the former Vice President was among those re-integrated by the Dr. Alex Ekwueme Committee set up to reconcile the party...
Atiku insisted that he did not have anything to do with the removal and distanced himself from any suggestions that his failed presidential bid was responsible for the unceremonious exit of Nwodo.
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