The Presidency has berated the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 election, Atiku Abubakar, over his statement that Nigeria is doomed, following his loss at the Supreme Court.

Atiku, a former Vice President, had said Nigeria and not himself was the bigger loser of the Supreme Court judgement which affirmed President Bola Tinubu’s victory in the February 25 presidential poll.

“The bigger loss is not mine but for Nigeria. If the Supreme Court implies that crime is good and should be rewarded, then Nigeria has lost, and the country is doomed irrespective of who occupies the office,” the PDP presidential candidate said at a press conference in Abuja on Monday, October 30.

Reacting, the Presidency, in a statement issued on Monday by the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, said Atiku’s ambition to become Nigeria’s President is doomed and not the country.

Onanuga stated: “We want to tell Alhaji Atiku this: Nigeria is not doomed. It is only Atiku’s inordinate ambition to be President that is doomed.

“Nigeria is moving forward and set to achieve its manifest destiny as one of the most respected and successful nations of the world under the leadership of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

“Contrary to Atiku’s gloomy submission on our democracy, we are excited to tell the world that our democracy is thriving and blossoming.

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“It is the reason, for the first time, since 1999 the character of our National Assembly and its outlook reflect the diversity and plurality of the choices and preferences of voters as a rainbow coalition of different parties as opposed to the practice in the past where just two parties dominated the national parliament.

“In today’s Nigeria, votes count. No amount of deliberate distortions of facts about our recent election by Alhaji Atiku and his partner, Peter Obi can vitiate the continuous improvement of our electoral process which local and international observers have hailed. As declared by the Supreme Court, IReV was not designed as an online collation centre. It was simply a public viewing centre for results.

“PDP and Atiku, including Peter Obi’s faction of Labour Party cannot continue to insist on their own reality against commonsense, logic and the law.”

He noted that Atiku lost the 2023 presidential election because Nigerians voted for President Tinubu, adding that the PDP presidential standard-bearer could not emerge winner for contesting under a divided party.

Onanuga said: “Tinubu, along with his APC, won because he offered a better vision for our country’s future. The All Progressives Congress as a united and formidable party which ran a well-coordinated campaign with his rank and file intact.

“Atiku lost because he went into a major election with a fragmented and tattered umbrella that could not hold together. There was no way Atiku and PDP could have won the election with the party platform under which he contested broken into four parts.

“If Atiku was not harboring a delusion of grandeur, we wonder how he could have envisaged any possible pathway to victory with Mr. Peter Obi’s Labour Party, Dr. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso’s NNPP and PDP G-5 Governors who took away possible PDP votes, while the APC went into the election as a strong, viable and unified entity.

“Alhaji Atiku Abubakar claims he loves Nigeria and embraces ‘integrity’ so much. We found such claim to be sheer hypocrisy as Atiku remains one of the worst examples of kleptocracy in Africa. The US Congress lists Atiku’s money laundering as one of the very rare cases of corruption at the highest level of governance in the world.

“His avarice sent congressman William Jefferson to jail after the FBI busted a bribery scandal in which Atiku was involved from head to toe and for which he was marked down by the U.S. agency.

“Now as we get to the proper business of governance after Atiku’s unwarranted distraction, we have picked some clear lessons going forward. One is that our institutions must be strengthened on diligent and sturdy wings, enough to withstand and identify from afar rabble-rousers who masquerade as statesmen.

“Second, our institutions must also ensure that corrupt, desperate, self-serving serial losers should not have a space in our democracy. Because if they don’t win the battle, they might burn the nation.

“We want to advise Atiku that after over three decades of elusive bid for the Presidency of Nigeria, he must now end his unprofitable bid and go away from any venture that will further pollute the political atmosphere and national harmony.”

The Star