APC chieftain, Ikonne, dismisses Abaribe’s threat of Tinubu losing 2027 poll

From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja

A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Prince Paul Ikonne, has dismissed the threat from Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe that President Bola Tinubu will not win the 2027 presidential election.

Ikonne equally frowned at Abaribe’s claim that President Tinubu did not win the 2023 presidential election, describing him as “politically desperate and a man out of tune with current realities”.

While launching a strong rebuttal against Enyinnaya over his recent comments, questioning the credibility of President Tinubu’s victory in the 2023 presidential election, he predicted that Tinubu’s victory in 2027 would be a total tsunami.

Ikonne, who responded to Abaribe’s claim, yesterday, argued that his comments were symptomatic of what he described as growing panic within the opposition political parties, ahead of the 2027 general elections.

He said: “If you know Senator Abaribe very well, you will realise that he is an attention seeker. This is a man who did not win his own election in 2023. One young man defeated him during the election, and anybody who wants to know the details should get what the young man filed at the Tribunal against Senator Abaribe.

“What Abaribe displayed showed clearly that the opposition, if any, is panicky. The President won election, not just in one state but across the country, and his popularity has gone up more than what it was in 2023, because 90 percent of PDP in the entire South East have collapsed into the APC,” he said.

“The raw materials of politics are human beings, and those human beings are now gravitating towards President Tinubu. This is the reality in the South East and Nigeria as a whole. I can assure you that there will be an Asiwaju tsunami in 2027,” the former Executive Secretary of National Agricultural Land Development Authority (NALDA) said.

“APC is a party of ideology, looking at the President, his programmes, he established a blueprint for Lagos State when he was a governor. It was launched officially, and any governor that comes after him would build on it. That’s progressive, that’s where you see development.

“So, that governor that played that foundation is now the President, and that blueprint has been expanded to accommodate the diverse nature of Nigeria, in order to develop the entire country. So, APC has an agenda. APC has ideology of development, ideology of raising the youths, and ideology of inclusiveness.

“So, if those defecting to APC have seen the light because their houses were on fire, and they need shelter, you accommodate them, educate them, and they will begin to see the difference. And that’s why they are not leaving. That’s the beauty of democracy. It is a global thing and not just about Nigeria,” he noted.