Politics

Presidency: Why Atiku lost presidential election to Tinubu

The Presidency has disclosed the reasons behind the failure of the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, to emerge as the winner of the February 25 presidential poll.

The Presidency stressed that Nigerians voted for President Bola Tinubu in the election, saying the former governor of Lagos State emerged as the winner of the presidential poll because he offered a better vision for the country’s future.

It, however, stated that Atiku, a former Vice President, lost the 2023 presidential election because he contested under a divided political party.

The Presidency said this in a statement issued by the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, on Monday, October 30, 2023.

Onanuga stated: “Tinubu, along with his APC, won because he offered a better vision for our country’s future. The All Progressives Congress as a united and formidable party which ran a well-coordinated campaign with his rank and file intact.

“Atiku lost because he went into a major election with a fragmented and tattered umbrella that could not hold together. There was no way Atiku and PDP could have won the election with the party platform under which he contested broken into four parts.

“If Atiku was not harboring a delusion of grandeur, we wonder how he could have envisaged any possible pathway to victory with Mr. Peter Obi’s Labour Party, Dr. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso’s NNPP and PDP G-5 Governors who took away possible PDP votes, while the APC went into the election as a strong, viable and unified entity.”

On Atiku’s statement that Nigeria is doomed over his loss at the Supreme Court to Tinubu, Onanuga said the PDP presidential flag-bearer’s ambition to become Nigeria’s President is doomed and not the country.

He added: “We want to tell Alhaji Atiku this: Nigeria is not doomed. It is only Atiku’s inordinate ambition to be President that is doomed.

“Nigeria is moving forward and set to achieve its manifest destiny as one of the most respected and successful nations of the world under the leadership of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

“Contrary to Atiku’s gloomy submission on our democracy, we are excited to tell the world that our democracy is thriving and blossoming.

“It is the reason, for the first time, since 1999 the character of our National Assembly and its outlook reflect the diversity and plurality of the choices and preferences of voters as a rainbow coalition of different parties as opposed to the practice in the past where just two parties dominated the national parliament.”

The Star