2019: Atiku has ‘lost touch with reality’, can’t win even his own LG- Buhari’s aide

Lauretta Onochie, Special Assistant on New Media to President Muhammadu Buhari, has stated that former vice-president Atiku Abubakar “has lost touch with reality”, and posed no threat to President Buhari’s 2019 chances as he could not even win his own local government in a presidential election.

Abubakar had earlier been quoted to have said he would definitely defeat Buhari should he contest in 2019.

But speaking on Politics Today, a Channels TV programme, Onochie said, “Atiku may have had that weight some years ago but over the years he’s been losing that weight and at the moment, I can tell you the even in his local government area in his native Adamawa, he can’t win any election.

“So where is the weight? I think Alhaji Abubakar Atiku has lost touch with reality; I think he needs to check again.

“He is known to hobnob from one party to the other when he cannot have control in that party.

“President Buhari is not competing with him at the moment. What he’s trying to do is to pull President Buhari out of the good work he’s doing and to come to wallow in the mud with him.

“The president also knows that the ban on politics has not been lifted; so, he is not going to come out to wallow in the mud with him.”

Read also: Ekweremadu, Bruce hail Atiku’s return to PDP, as Makarfi hints at own presidential bid

On Abubakar’s claim that the All Progressives Congress (APC) had failed Nigerians, Onochie said “absolute bunkum! There is nothing that is further from the truth than what the former vice-president Atiku Abubakar has said.

“Nigeria was on its knees when this present government came into place and it was the same PDP that he has now returned to that has kept Nigeria on its knees for a period of 16 years. It was not under the APC that the economy of the nation almost collapsed right under our eyes.

“I don’t see how this government has caused this problem that it is grappling with today. And this government is trying very hard to clean the mess that this government made over the last 16 years.

“Nobody should expect that these problems will be sorted out in three years. It is not done anywhere.

“As we speak, there is no inch of this country that is still under the occupation of Boko Haram. A lot needs to be done and this government is doing more.”

On criticisms against the APC over poor job creation record, Onochie claimed the money looted in the previous administration was to blame, before doing something of a reversal, rejecting the charge.

She said APC had not failed as “jobs are being created every day. It is doing all the best it can. I will not accept nor agree that this government has failed in the aspect of job creation”.

 

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