Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has been declared winner of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, presidential primary election held across the country.
Atiku was declared winner after polling 1,846,370 votes to
defeat former Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, who got 504,117
votes.
Speaking after the declaration, Atiku said:
I wish to express my profound appreciation for the
privilege, which you have bestowed on me, of leading our great party, the
African Democratic Congress, into the next elections as its Presidential
Candidate. I am truly humbled and excited by this singular honour.
We demonstrated that while democracy is being strangled and
squashed by the ruling party and its oppressive and anti-democratic government,
democracy is alive and well in the African Democratic Congress. In our party, members are allowed to express
their views, to have ambitions and to contest for elective positions in a free,
fair and transparent process.
Our great party is a coalition built through hard work,
immense sacrifices and compromises, guided by our determination to rescue our
country’s democracy which is facing its greatest threat since the return to
democratic rule in 1999.
As I speak, virtually all opposition political parties in
the country have leadership crisis engineered by the APC government, the INEC
and elements in the judiciary. And opposition figures continue to be harassed
and intimidated, including those languishing in detention, such as Mallam Nasir
El-Rufai who distinguished himself as a public servant, including as a Minister
and two-term Governor of Kaduna State. He has been in detention for three
months despite court orders granting him bail. He has been denied the right to
celebrate two important religious holidays with his family in addition to being
denied the opportunity to be by his mother’s side as she took her last breath.
All because he is a leading opposition figure! This kind of cruelty must stop.
The government continues to harass, intimidate and coerce
opposition politicians to join the APC using the security agencies as well as
the agencies which were set up by a previous government to fight corruption.
Under this government, once a person joins the APC, the harassment ceases and
the charges against them magically disappear.
This abuse of power must stop.
Great care was taken to ensure that due diligence was done
in the process of forming this coalition. Yet the government and the INEC
continue to undermine it, even trying to deregister it. Let me warn that any
further attempt to interfere in the affairs of the party by the Presidency,
INEC and judiciary will be fiercely resisted. Enough is enough.
I congratulate my fellow contestants for this ticket to
represent our great party in the elections scheduled for early next year. I know that you are driven by your patriotism
and commitment to a better Nigeria and improved life for our people.
I know that, like me, you are deeply concerned about the
rapid descent of our country into economic disaster, catastrophic insecurity,
extreme nepotism, political intolerance and the drive towards a one-party state
by the current government and its party. I thank you for your healthy
participation in this democratic process.
I must state at this juncture that this is not the time to
celebrate. No one was defeated because we are one party and we all need to
recognise the fierce urgency of the moment. Therefore, we have to unite, as we
pledged before this process, to work to pull our country and our people out of
the destructive grip of a corrupt, incompetent and polarising APC government.
I thank the primary elections Committee for organising
peaceful, free, fair and transparent primaries. I thank the various leadership
organs of our party, the various stakeholders, and volunteers for their hard
work and dedication and all our party members and supporters for their efforts,
patience and conduct during the process.
With the primaries behind us, the real hard work is about to
begin. We have to prepare to campaign hard to win the next general elections in
order to begin the difficult process of rescuing our country and its
long-suffering people from this government.”
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