The All Progressives Congress (APC) has blasted Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president and presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 presidential election, for continually blaming it for the festering rot in his party and the spectacular dysfunction of opposition parties generally.
According to the ruling party, Atiku, at the national conference on Strengthening Democracy in Nigeria held in Abuja on Monday, warned that judicial involvement in electoral matters somewhat imperils the nation‘s democracy.
APC, in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Felix Morka, flayed the former president for alleging that President Bola Tinubu was paying confident opposition leaders a whooping N50 million each to discombobulate opposition parties in the country.
“In the Atiku era as Vice President, particularly in 2003 and 2007, the PDP conducted the worst elections in our political history. We cannot possibly forget how Atiku’s PDP heavy-handedly captured most South-West states and vowed to remain in power for 60 years.
“It was in those same years that Atiku’s former boss and then President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, infamously described the election as a „do or die affair“ in a desperate attempt to annex Lagos.
“If democracy was neither derailed nor endangered in those perilous days, is it now that elections are freer, fairer and more credible that Nigeria risks losing democracy?
“The judicial branch of government is a constitutional creation like the executive and legislative branches with its constitutionally defined powers to adjudicate disputes among citizens and between citizens and the state.
„Atiku cannot wish away or seek to abolish enshrined power of the courts to intervene in civil disputes, including electoral disputes, in cases where a litigant validly invokes the authority of the court.
“It is ironic that Atiku, Nigeria’s most prolific electoral litigator, would make such a ludicrous claim that judicial involvement in electoral matters threatens democracy. His criticism of the courts and the electoral process rings hollow, given his long history of using the courts to further his political agenda. It is time for him to step back and let the democratic process unfold without his interference.
“Atiku‘s allegation that the APC-led administration was paying out 50 Million Naira to some opposition figures is simply bogus and laughable. Atiku knows his political desperation is responsible for the PDP’s catastrophic disintegration. Peddling rumours and unsubstantiated allegations should be beneath anyone in the standing of an elder statesman, a former Vice President and a serial contestant for the exalted office of President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“The bizarre suggestion by opposition figures like Atiku, Peter Obi, and recently, aggrieved leaders like Mallam Nasir El-Rufai that our great Party may be complicit in the internal corrosion of opposition parties is pitiful and only an incompetent alibi for their crass failure to manage their affairs.
They cannot govern their parties but tout their ability to rule Africa’s most populous country.
“As discerning citizens, Nigerians know better than to be distracted by the false alarm and hollow allegations of desperate politicians whose only goal is to shore up their political relevance in the 2027 general elections,“ he added.