The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party PDP (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, says he is not bothered by the endorsement of the presidential flag-bearer of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, by elder statesman, Chief Edwin Clark.
Atiku said what mattered more to him was the overwhelming support of the Nigerians who he said have the ultimate power to decide the next president of the country.
The former Vice President, who spoke through the spokesman of the Atiku/Okowa Presidential Campaign Council, Charles Aniagwu, with newsmen on Tuesday, said the fact that Clark hails from the same Delta State as the PDP’s vice-presidential candidate, Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, does not stop him (Clark) from having his personal opinion.
He, however, expressed confidence that the PDP would win the 2023 presidential election, saying: “In this election, we (Nigeria) are going to have as much as over 90 million Nigerians qualified to vote. At the end of the day, even if we don’t have 50% turn out, it means that as much as 47.5 million Nigerians will be voting.
“For us in the PDP, as much as we desire some of these endorsements, we look forward to Nigerians who ultimately have the power to give us their endorsements, and that is what is going to happen on the day of voting.
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“If you watch our rallies, you will see that silently we are receiving a whole lot of endearment from Nigerians.
“Secondly, there are a lot of other notable elder statesmen in this country that will not engage in public endorsement of candidates. The question, is don’t they have their choices?
“So if one or two goes ahead to express their choice openly, that does not in any way vitiate the potency of those other persons who are going to remain silent on their own endorsement or who we discussed with and we know that they are with us.
“So it is anybody’s democratic right to pitch their tent with whoever they like. We are not disturbed, we are reaching out to Nigerians because we do know that their endorsement carries more weight than any other endorsement,” Aniagwu said.
The PDP campaign spokesman, while speaking on Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom’s backing of former President Olusegun Obasanjo following the latter’s endorsement of Obi, said the development was not a source of worry for the party, stressing that the governor has never been on the train of the PDP.
“If he says he prefers one candidate, it is within his democratic right. We have millions of Nigerians in support of Atiku-Okowa ticket, those ones are also very important.
“You know one beautiful thing about voting in an election is, if you are going to buy a product, maybe clothes, you can say quality clothes, quality shoes. But in voting, we don’t have quality voting.
“We do desire that some of these high profile persons possibly come to our side but we are comfortable that there are a lot of high profile Nigerians who don’t want a public show of their support.
“We are quite comfortable with where we are, and we respect their democratic right,” Aniagwu added.
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