VON DG blames Atiku for PDP’s defeat at tribunal

Osita Okechukwu, the Director-General of the Voice of Nigeria (VON), has blamed Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party for the party’s loss at the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC).

Okechukwu made this assertion when he spoke with journalists in Abuja on Thursday.

He claimed that although the main opposition PDP had a good chance of winning the 2023 presidential election, the party’s nominee, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, had political ambitions that prevented the party from winning.

Read Also: PEPTJudgement: Tribunal rejects Peter Obi’s claims of election rigging, strikes out testimonies of 10 out of 13 witnesses

Atiku’s reluctance to seize the chance and act as a statesman by endorsing his former running mate Peter Obi or any other Southern presidential contender split the opposition party, according to the VON DG.

“Those intricate webs could have been resolved if Atiku had obeyed the zoning convention, supported Peter Obi or any other Southern presidential candidate it could been simply an all southern bout.

“The Wike Masquerade couldn’t have emerged. That would have meant that the bulk of votes he garnered could have been credited to PDP.

“Atiku divided PDP’s votes irreparably, all the votes Labour Party garnered were from the party’s stronghold, minus voted warehoused by the former Vice President who naively forgot that northern voters are one of the most sophisticated in the country, but believed that northern electorate would behave like children in a dormitory waiting for directives on how to vote,” he said.

“So, it is obvious that when Atiku sacrificed statesmanship on the altar of narrow political ambition, one concluded that he had wittingly or unwittingly fatally wounded the fabric of PDP. And, going by the time worn cliché, a divided house cannot stand, Nigerians should recognise that Atiku by his greed denied PDP a possible victory.”

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