The presidential candidate of All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, has described the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, as an old man and pathological liar.
The former Lagos governor responded to the Atiku claiming that he rejected him as running mate in 2007 on the Action Congress ticket because of a Muslim-Muslim ticket.
Newsflash Nigeria had reported that the PDP Presidential candidate had given the reason to reject former Lagos State Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu as his running mate in 2007.
Atiku said he rejected Tinubu, now the presidential candidate of the APC to be his running mate in 2007 because of a Muslim-Muslim ticket.
Atiku, former Vice President said this in an interview with Arise TV on Friday monitored by Newsflash Nigeria.
Atiku made it clear that when he defected to Tinubu’s then Action Congress (AC) in 2006, he was given some conditions before he got the presidential ticket for the 2007 election. According to him, the topmost was to pick Tinubu as running mate.
The PDP Presidential Candidate said the Muslim-Muslim ticket has always been his fundamental disagreement with Tinubu. Nigeria is a multiethnic and multi-religious nation and there should be a religious balance in leadership.
He said ”My fundamental disagreement with Asiwaju since 2007 was on the issue of a Muslim-Muslim ticket, which led to my political departure from Asiwaju’
But in a statement released on Saturday by his Media Office signed by Tunde Rahman, Tinubu said Nigerians should feel great pity and sadness for the candidate of the PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
The former Lagos State Governor said by Atiku’s desperate attempt to win the election by stoking religious bias, he has reduced himself to uttering baseless lies on national television.
He said: “We are saddened to see such a man become unhinged from the truth. So obsessed is he with his quest for office, Atiku is willing to render any form of untruth if he thinks it might gain him a single vote. Atiku may want to be president. However, all he has shown is that he is a pathological liar.
“Whatever moral compass he had has been lost. During a 22 July television interview, Atiku assaulted historical truth by lying that he did not name Tinubu as his running mate in 2007 on the Action Congress ticket because Atiku did not want a Muslim as his running mate.”
Recalling that Atiku was not part of the formation of the Action Congress, Tinubu stated that it was the actual founders of the AC who offered the party’s flag to the former vice president because of the need to fight the authoritarian designs then “President Obasanjo and the PDP had on Nigeria’s democracy.”
He said: “At that moment, Atiku had been unceremoniously pushed aside if not out of the PDP by Obasanjo. We needed to rally all forces to confront the one-party state Obasanjo had in mind. Atiku was simply a beneficiary of this collective duty to fight the attack on multi-party democracy the PDP had launched.
“I feel sorry for dear old Atiku. Love of his own ambition has eclipsed his relationship with the truth and an honest account of the past. We formed the AC without his knowledge. When President Obasanjo virtually exiled him from the PDP, we lent him our support by giving him the AC platform for the 2007 election.”
