Atiku not a threat to Buhari – APC chieftain

A chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) from Benue State, Comrade Daniel Onjeh, says the emergence of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate is not a threat to the re-election ambition of President Muhammadu Buhari.

Onjeh, who is the APC senatorial aspirant at the inconclusive Benue South primary, and Chairman, Governing Board of Project Development Institute (PRODA), disclosed this on Friday while addressing journalists at the party’s national secretariat in Abuja.

The former President of National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) dismissed the insinuations that the Wazirin Adamawa was the president-in-waiting as the ‘deranged views of the lunatic fringe’.

He also wondered why former President Olusegun Obasanjo had turned around to back Atiku whom had been vilified at different times.

“But Atiku is not a threat to President Buhari’s chances of re-election in 2019. While Buhari is lionized as an epitome of integrity, transparency, and accountability, qualities which informed his adoption by the African Union as the continent’s anti-corruption champion, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, a former deputy controller general of the then exceedingly corrupt Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), has been mentioned in tales of corruption.

“Since coming to public life, President Muhammadu Buhari has been above board. His corrective military regime was overthrown by the same cabal who plunged us into the current economic debacle we face.

“Until the 2015 elections, his aspiration to change the way we do things in Nigeria was thwarted by the same selfish and godless interests. His determined and focused fight against corruption has elicited a sustained, vigorous, and well-funded campaign of calumny and media lynching of his person. Yet, he remained undaunted. The corrupt cabal, who became billionaires through the granting of oil wells by former military dictators, leeches and parasites all their lives, have ganged up to support Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.

“Nigerians should avoid sentiments and disregard all propaganda by those desperate to return to power by all means because they know that another term for Buhari means they will all go to jail. To their eternal shame, their assets would be confiscated and shared out to the poor. This realization has driven them to a state of extreme desperation; they will do anything to fight back. Atiku has never been and will never be a threat to Buhari in 2019.”