2023: PDP running after train that has left station, says APC

The All Progressives Congress says the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is bringing up allegations against Bola Tinubu, the APC’s presidential candidate, in the 2023 elections due to his popularity.

In a statement in Abuja on Sunday, Bayo Onanuga, Director, Media and Publicity, APC Presidential Campaign Council (PCC), said PDP realised that Mr Tinubu’s sure victory in the 2023 presidential election was inevitable.

Mr Onanuga was reacting to a recent allegation against Mr Tinubu by Mr Phrank Shaibu, the media aide to Atiku Abubakar, the PDP presidential candidate.

Mr Shaibu had criticised the APC presidential candidate for avoiding debates and interviews and challenged him to provide his full name, among other details. 

“Tinubu’s entire life and persona is based on falsehood, and thus he cannot address these questions hence his decision to continue to run all over the place. But these controversies did not begin today,’ Mr Abubakar’s media aide said.

But Mr Onanuga stated that such matters had been thrown into the dustbin decades ago.

“This latest allegation, we must say, is another attempt at shadowboxing,” Mr Onanuga stated.

He added that having failed to pull the wool over the eyes of Nigerians on its 16 years of “infamous governance“, the PDP had just woken up to realise that Mr Tinubu’s victory was inevitable.

“It is this that had led to the desperate resort to character assassination and innuendoes,” the APC PCC spokesperson said.

Mr Onanuga said it was unfortunate that the PDP and its presidential candidate had chosen to revive a dead allegation, knowing that the coming election was again slipping away.

“We, however, sympathise with Atiku and his mudslinging agents; we know why they are lashing on every straw available. They are seized with fear that the election is once again lost.

“With the massive turnout of the Nigerians to welcome Tinubu in Kaduna, Minna, Abuja and other parts of the country in the last week, it is obvious that they are running after a train that has left the station,” he said.

Noting that the constitution was clear on citizens’ right to contest, Mr Onanuga said INEC had affirmed that Mr Tinubu was qualified to run for the position.

“But the PDP and Atiku are utterly confused and in serious disarray and running round in circus like a barber’s chair looking for what is not lost,” Mr Onanuga said.

He said in the last two weeks, no fewer than six cases filed by proxies of the PDP on these same frivolous allegations had been thrown out by the courts.

“Yet like a fly that insists on being buried with the corpse, the media handlers of the PDP prefer to flog a dead horse.

“The over 93 million registered voters, who will vote in the 2023 elections, have the intellect to choose who they want as president.

“That man is Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Yes, that is his name.

“The PDP should wait for its day of judgement rather than engage in this obscurantist, diversionary game, a game that the Nigerian masses will determine,“ Mr Onanuga said. 

(NAN)