The presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu has asked his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) counterpart, Atiku Abubakar to disclose his health status and corrupt tendencies to Nigerians.
There were reports that Atiku was flown to the UK, for medical attention, but his handlers said the former vice-president was not ill but travelled out of the country on an invitation by the British government.
But reacting, Tinubu in a statement by the Director, Media and Publicity of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Bayo Onanuga, insisted that Atiku was ill.
He said, “We have it on good authority that Atiku indeed fell ill while missing on the field. He was indeed in the UK for some medical help, though handlers camouflage that he was there on the invitation of some British officials at Whitehall, in a mimic of the earlier visit of the APC rival, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
“Despite the efforts by his handlers to showcase Atiku as healthy and physically fit to endure the rigours of the presidential campaign, pictures from rallies have belied this. Campaign pictures sometimes showed him being helped to descend steps at stadia. Sometimes, he walked with an apparent handicap, dragging his feet.”
The statement said, “It is time for Atiku Abubakar, the 76-year-old presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party to come clean over two issues clouding his campaign: his health status and scandalous confession of how he colluded with his former boss, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo to fleece the Nigerian treasury, using the special purpose vehicles after he became vice-president in 1999.
“If Atiku has some modicum of honour, he ought to have stepped down from the race that he is bound to lose again, following the release of his audio clip, in which he provides a vivid explanation into the modus operandi of his legendary corruption.
“The lies of several years and the various diversionary tactics are no longer sustainable. Atiku’s edifice of lies is about to crash on him. The PDP presidential candidate is certainly not okay, the papering efforts notwithstanding.”