Military backers are leading PDP - Atiku

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar said on Monday that those leading the Peoples Democratic Party in Nigeria were backers of the military.


He, therefore, urged the leadership of the party to get off the moral high horse, saying they should note that name-calling was a childish response to the crisis of confidence, which he said the ruling party was currently experiencing.

Abubakar said it was wrong for the party to look for scapegoats and should therefore take responsibility for the state of the nation.

In a statement by his media office in Abuja in reaction to the comments credited to the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Mr. Olisa Metuh, the formeVice President noted that it was inappropriate for the leadership of his former party to describe him as an “ingrate.”

He said as a former Vice President and someone who had worked hard in the formation of the PDP, he deserved respect and decent language from the party leaders.

He said when leaders speak, they should not do so with selective memory.

He said, “The personal insults in the PDP statement succeeded in doing just one thing, which is to depict its managers as childish, petulant, and above all else incompetent. It confirms the notion on the part of many that they don’t have what it takes to live up to their ‘sacred’ mandate.

“They have lost their way, and their refusal to recognise the error of their ways has prompted the shepherds to – reluctantly – move on, for the nation’s sake to build a better future for the country’s teeming population.”

He recalled that the new guard in the PDP kept a low profile when he (Abubakar) along with other champions of democracy such as the late Gen. Shehu Yar’Adua, the late MKO Abiola, the late Kudirat Abiola, the late Sunday Afolabi and other members of NADECO, including Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, fought in the frontline to remove the military from power.

He said, “Since almost all of us – the founding members of the PDP – have been hounded out of the party because we allegedly have one aspiration or the other.

“People who supported of military rule or did not even know what was going on are now the masters of PDP, and present themselves as the custodians of the nation’s future.

“But I challenge anyone of them to show their contribution except looting the Nigerian treasury.

“If I and other patriots working in tandem with the National Assembly did not work together to retain term limits in the Constitution none of those holding power today would not have been there from local, state or federal governments.

“Those who wrap themselves in the PDP banner should at least recognise and respect those of us who made today’s debates possible.”