Atiku reaffirms his loyalty to President Buhari and APC

Former vice president Atiku Abubakar has reacted to reports that he and Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo state where forming a union to takeover power from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2019 presidential poll. 

In a statement by his media adviser, Paul Ibe, Atiku said the report represent the features of a political hatchet job planted by his opponents who are desperately trying to invent events. Atiku claims the report is also aimed at drawing a wedge between him and President Buhari on one hand and the APC leadership on the other hand.

He said: “The report was an incompetent product of fiction, so shallow and vacuous that even its authors could not validate its credibility with reliable and verifiable sources. “Some people of bad faith trying tooth and nail to spread the seeds of discord in the party, and destroy the much needed unity, harmony and cohesion, which are the pillars of strength for every political organisation.”

The statement also stated that despite all the smear campaigns and reputation lynching and sponsored falsehoods, Atiku’s loyalty to President Buhari and the APC leadership would not be shaken an inch. According to Ibe, Atiku “would ordinarily have ignored the malicious report, but he chose to react, lest his silence would be mistaken as an admission of the falsehoods published against him.” Reports had emanated that the key figures in the ruling APC are mulling what a source called ‘a strong third force’.

While Atiku belongs to the APC, Mimiko is of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and indeed, a key figure in the resolution of the crisis in the opposition party.