By Amb. Tony Okonigene
It seems for each major outing, the PDP presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar (AA), will always make one or two mistakes that will require his aides to be going around explaining what he actually meant to say or do. The famous statement about a Yoruba or Igbo candidate is still hanging like an albatross on his neck and he went ahead to commit more irredeemable blunders in Edo State.
AA seems not to have realized the fact that he is gunning for the President of Nigeria and not a section of the country. He echoed a statement that “Edo no be Lagos and Edo cannot be Lagos”. The implication here is that he prefers Edo to Lagos and has no confidence in Lagos. Does AA know the fact that the votes in Lagos can turn the tables? When he gets to Lagos, what will he tell the Lagosians? His media aides have been given another assignment to start explaining what he actually meant by that statement.
Opportunities have presented themselves for AA to prove that he is indeed a unifier but he has proven that he is a factional leader even within his party. One would have expected him to seize the opportunity of his visit to Edo state to try and unite the two factions in the party. Instead he chose to go along with one faction without the major one.
I was wondering, when Atiku said he wanted to thank Edo people for voting for him in 2019, whether he took a look at the Edo people surrounding him. Those who voted for him were not there. The Governor, Deputy Governor, two of their senatorial candidates, all their reps candidates, chief of staff, SSG, etc who stood around him, did not vote for him in 2019. They all fought against him and lost.Those who voted for him are the ones that were shut out. Did the unifier think of that?
He went ahead to mention the names of PDP governors whom he claimed have been performing. One expected AA as an experienced politician, to score a point here by congratulating Governor Wike for his award by an opposition President for infrastructural development. No, not Atiku. He did not even mention Wike.
Again, Governor Obaseki’s claim of Edo PDP having over 530,000 registered members should have been called to question. How come a party with such number of registered members could not fill one quarter of a 40,000 capacity stadium even with half of the crowd coming from outside the state? This should send a strong message to AA that all is not well for him in Edo State but with his eyes on the northern votes, not even Lagos matters to him in the South talk less of Edo.
Indeed, during the coming 2023 presidential election, Lagos will actually demonstrate that “Eko no be Edo laye laye”