Why Atiku needs to step down, become a statesman – APC chieftain

An All Progressives Congress chieftain has called on former Vice President Atiku Abubakar to step down from the 2027 presidential race and embrace the role of a statesman. Osita Okechukwu, speaking on Arise Television, argued that Abubakar's participation in the 2023 presidential election, which he believes defied the Peoples Democratic Party's zoning agreement, weakened both the opposition and Nigeria's democracy.

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I have great respect for His Excellency Atiku Abubakar. He was very close to some of my late senior colleagues, Dubem Onyia and Chuba Okadigbo. I have great respect for him.

Okechukwu expressed admiration for Abubakar but urged him to place national interest above personal ambition. He recalled Abubakar's past political maneuvers, including leaving the PDP in 2014 to contest the presidency with the APC, only to return to the PDP. He also pointed to Abubakar's participation in the 2018 PDP presidential primaries where no southern aspirant was present.

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My appeal to him is to consider the interest of the Nigerian state and our fledgling democracy. About three years ago, he did the same thing by breaching the rotation convention, and the collateral damage is heavy.

The APC chieftain asserted that Abubakar's 2022 decision to contest the PDP presidential primary, instead of allowing the ticket to shift to the South, had significant political consequences. He stated that this fallout destabilized the PDP, diminished its standing as Nigeria's main opposition party, and left a lasting impact on the nation's political landscape.

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Heavy in the sense that, luckily for the Nigerian state, democracy remained and the country remained, but the destabilisation of the PDP had its own collateral damages that cannot be quantified. In fact, the damages got to his backyard because if in 2022 he had acted like a statesman, which I’m pleading with him to do because it’s not too late to become one in a country like ours…

Okechukwu also criticized Abubakar's accusations against President Bola Tinubu regarding moves to create a one-party state. He suggested that the PDP's internal decisions, particularly concerning zoning and candidate selection, played a major role in its current predicament, implying that Abubakar's actions contributed to the party's weakened position.

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If he had said that in 2014 I walked away from the PDP, telling them that it was the turn of the North, joined the APC and contested for the presidency…I think it was when we were less than one year old when they joined us in protest, and he contested for president with us, came third and returned to the PDP. And in the 2018 presidential primaries of the PDP, no southern aspirant participated.