WHY I'M SUPPORTING ATIKU

Dear citizens of Nigeria,

Our party has finally picked an able Vice Presidential candidate in Governor Ifeanyi Okowa. As it stands, we now have the most balanced ticket in Nigeria. It is Muslim-Christian ticket. It is a strong Northern-Southern ticket. We are for secularism, where religion is separate from government. We have a VP with one leg in the Southeast and the other in the South-South. Nigerians, we are ready, and we humbly beg for your votes.

So, why should you vote for Alhaji Atiku Abubakar as President on February 25, 2023? I will give you 10 reasons.

1. Support Atiku because he creates jobs. He co-founded INTELS, one of the largest oil and gas/ports logistics firms in Africa, in the 80s. His Priam group employs more people than most state governments. Creating jobs for Nigeria’s youth will end insecurity!

2. Support Atiku because he is a lover of education, who established the American University of Nigeria, Yola. Through that institution, he gave scholarships to indigent students, including #ChibokGirls. What that proves is that he loves education and would fund ASUU and ASUP!

3. Support Atiku because he personifies the brand of politics Nigeria has yearned for since Independence from Great Britain, which can be summarised as secular, free market based, and private sector led. He believes in meritocracy and wants to restructure Nigeria, bringing true federalism

4. Atiku is healthy. He plays football. He works out at the gym. He is social and cosmopolitan. He develops his mind and just finished a Master’s programme from Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, The United Kingdom’. His age and health are not suspicious. He is ready to govern!

5. For Nigerian workers, you need to know that not only does Atiku employ more people than most state governments, he also plays them above minimum wage. If he pays his private workers minimum wage, he will look after you and pay minimum wage if you elect him!

6. Atiku has good experience. He served Nigeria for 20 years in the Nigerian Customs Service. Upon retirement, he went into private business and flourished. He fought Abacha and was exiled to London. He returned to Nigeria while Abacha was alive to fight for democracy on the home front. He became a democratically elected Vice President. He is tailor made to be President!

7. Support Atiku because he led the Economic Management Team that paid off Nigeria’s debt, and privatised the telecom sector, and cement industry, that exploded our GDP and created jobs. He did it before and he can do it even better again now Nigeria is broke.

8. Vote for Atiku because he brought in effective technocrats into government and led the Obasanjo administration’s efforts to restore peace, and reestablish law and order during the Sharia crisis of 2000. Nigeria needs technocrats and peace. Atiku is your man for the job

9. Choose Atiku because while he was Vice President, Nigeria paid off her foreign debts. Today, Nigeria is a heavily indebted nation, owing ₦46 trillion. We even borrow to pay salaries. We need someone like Atiku, who can create wealth to repay those loans.

10. Finally, Nigeria is a multi ethnic/religious nation. We need someone that understands the complex nature of our diversity and knows how to manage it. That person is Atiku, a Northerner who spent all his professional life in Southern Nigeria and married a Southerner.

My name is Reno Omokri, and I support the Atiku-Okowa ticket, because I know from personal experience that they will provide Jobs, create Opportunities, and Secure Nigeria.

#WhyISupoortAtiku

 

Former Governor of Borno State, Kashim Shettima, on Sunday morning apologised to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, saying he did not mean to denigrate them.

Shettima’s apology comes barely 48 hours after his interview on Channels Television programme ‘Politics Today’ on Friday.

The former governor, who is a strong ally of the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, had described Osinbajo as a decent man who should be selling popcorn and ice cream.

He said, “Osinbajo is a good man; he’s a nice man. But nice men do not make good leaders, because nice men tend to be nasty. Nice men should be selling popcorn, ice cream.”

On Lawan, Shettima said the facts are clear that the senate president, who cuts the image of a tomato trader, lacks capacity to confront the PDP candidate, Atiku Abubakar.

“Go to Ohafia or Arochukwu and ask for Ahmed Lawan, the first thing that will come to their mind is that of a tomato dealer who is bringing tomatoes from Maiduguri. Go to any part of the south. Does the brand name sell?” he said.

However, a remorseful Shettima took to his Twitter account to apologise days later, saying his remarks were misrepresented.

 

He said, “My interview on Channels TV was taken out of context. When I appeared on Channels TV last Friday amidst the tension rippling through our political arena, it was to underline the promise of Tinubu’s presidential bid held for those yet to establish the certainty of the hurdle ahead of the convention.

“I never set out to denigrate the personality of any aspirant, and definitely not that of my dear friends and allies. None of them is an opponent, so their aspiration isn’t a threat to us.

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“They appear so in the sprint to become the party’s presidential flag-bearer in the 2023 elections, but they are our allies in the marathon.

“My assessments of the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, and Senator Ahmad Lawan, were well-intentioned. I never set out to subject them to ridicule but, rather, to stir up interest in the contrasting virtues of the cast of aspirants putting up a fight against my preferred aspirant, one most favoured and advantaged to guarantee APC’s victory in the forthcoming presidential election.

“The interpretations of my remarks on Osinbajo and Senator Lawan are, thus, being done literally and overblown. The interpretations of my remarks on Osinbajo and Lawan are, thus, being done literally and overblown.

“My words weren’t woven to portray them as unworthy aspirants, but merely to qualify them as non-threatening contenders. I, however, take full responsibility for my utterances and wish to appeal to our teeming supporters to neither take my words out of their metaphoric contexts nor interpret them as a measure and declaration of hostility towards my dear friends and allies.

“I, hereby, tender my unreserved apologies to the Vice President and the President of the Senate for the unintended pains my jibes might have caused them and their families and supporters.

“A divided house, even if in the assumptions and imaginations of supporters with a distant grasp of our relationships with other aspirants, is the last impression we wish to create among Nigerians. I want this to be taken as an appeal to our supporters across all political camps to build bridges and mend fences as the actual journey is just about to begin. Victory, for the discerning, has always been the first lap of the race.”