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From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has described former Speaker House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara and so-called APC northern Christian leaders as impostors having left the ruling party few weeks ago.
Tinubu further claimed that Dogara, particularly, has apparently lost his mind since failing to actualise his self-imposed ambition to be on the presidential ticket of the ruling party.
He took the swipe in a statement signed by Bayo Onanuga, Director, Media & Publicity, Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council, made available to newsmen in Abuja on Monday.
He insisted that he was not surprised by the resolutions adopted but surprised that the media failed to read through their smokescreen.
He said: “On account of of not realising his presidential ambition, he has certainly become a reprobate and demagogue, delivering hate speeches and whipping up emotions, with the aim of setting our country ablaze.
“The Tinubu-Shettima PCC is therefore not surprised by media reports about a meeting of some so-called Northern Christian leaders, who claimed to be members of our APC that was championed by Dogara and his ilks.
The claim was totally fraudulent,” Tinubu fumed.
Reacting further to the meeting held in Asaba, Delta State, Asiwaju, in the statement, argued that Dogara lacks the power to organise such meeting having left the party unceremoniously few weeks ago.
“Dogara, peripatetic and politically unstable politician who organised the meeting left our party officially and unceremoniously weeks ago. And those who attended the meeting were representing themselves, their selfish agenda, not Northern Christians.
“Before then, the former speaker had spearheaded a campaign of vitriol and hate against our party, using religion as camouflage, after he lost the vice-presidential candidacy to a better qualified Senator Kashim Shettima.
“A careful reading of the people who attended the unholy meeting he called also showed that they were all PDP members, masquerading as APC members. Among the politicians at the unholy consultative meeting were Mukhar Shagari, Boni Haruna, Abdulfattah Ahmed; Damishi Sango; Senator Idris Ahmed Umar; and two former deputy governors of Kogi State, Yomi Awoniyi and Simon Achuba. They are all PDP members working for the presidential ambition of Atiku Abubakar,” Tinubu alleged in the statement.
He added: “We were not surprised by the resolutions adopted. Our surprise was that the media failed to read through their smokescreen. The APC PCC wondered how the assembly of strange bedfellows hoped to foster unity and cohesion in our country, when their candidate represents the antithesis of the goal, having emerged the greatest divider of our polity, between the north and south.
“All Nigerians are aware that Atiku’s emergence as the PDP presidential candidate grossly violated a power rotation code between the north and the south. His insistence on snatching and retaining what righly belongs to another political region has triggered a crisis within his party, making him run from Port Harcourt to London to mend fences.
“We want to assure Dogara and his co-travellers fanning hate campaign against our Presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu and his running mate, that they will fail spectacularly at the polls.
“From the engagements our leaders have had with men of all faiths, bigotry will not win next February election. What will prevail are the track records of our candidates and the solution-driven and all-inclusive progressive programmes the candidates offer Nigerians.
“Tinubu and Shettima are going into this campaign with clear objectives to engage Nigerians across the socio-economic brackets on policy actions that will make their lives better. Our candidates will not exploit our country’s fault lines to win election and sell religion as Kool Aid,” the statement read.
