By Chinelo Obogo
The Director-General, Global Initiatives for Good Governance (GIGG), Dr. Emeka Kalu, has accused a former national vice president of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Olabode George, of peddling unsubstantiated lies against Nigeria’s former vice president, Atiku Abubakar.
Reacting to an interview in which George said that the PDP lost the 2023 presidential election because Atiku was the candidate, Kalu, in a statement he made on Tuesday, demanded an immediate retraction from George or be faced with a legal action from the initiative.
He also questioned how Atiku’s candidacy in the 2023 presidential election denied PDP of victory despite what he described as the obvious electoral malpractices during the polls, insisting that the attack against the former VP is a ploy to weaken his political platform.
He pointed out that the current economic crisis can only change through an Atiku’s presidency, describing him as the only person with the audacity to return Nigeria to the forefront of infrastructural development and national security, considering his wealth of experience in public administration and politics.
Kalu insisted that an Atiku presidency in 2027 would heal the nation of the wounds the All Progressives Party (APC) has inflicted on the nation in the last five years, especially in the last one year of President Bola Tinubu’s administration.
He said: “Chief Olabode George recently cited that the PDP lost the 2023 Presidential election because Atiku was the candidate.
“Holistically, it is defamatory to be meaninglessly antagonising a respected national leader whose antecedents have ever remained befitting, especially in touching the lives of the masses.
“As a sagacious and resilient leader, Atiku Abubakar has been intentional in re-jiging the collapsing socio-political economic structures of the nation when elected the next President and it remains one of his continued points of national transformation agenda towards healing the wounds of APC’s lopsided governance in the country.
“So saddening that those who fed from the political pot of Waziri Adamawa to become relevant in the political society have chosen to denigrate his personality simply to please Atiku’s enemies.
“I hereby demand that this misguided, badly conceived and politically motivated character destruction is henceforth retracted, else our legal department would not hesitate to sue the defaulters on personality assassination, misrepresentation of facts and defamation of character.
“In conclusion, I hereby sternly warn that Atiku Abubakar be addressed with honour and his reputations must not be ruined nor debased.”