‘Atiku abandoned us and ran to Dubai’ – ex-campaign spokesman

Kassim Afegbua, a one-time campaign spokesman for ex-Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has revealed that his former boss deserted his associates and “ran away to Dubai to recalibrate” following his loss to President Muhammadu Buhari in the last general elections.

POLITICS NIGERIA recalls that on February 27, 2019, Atiku lost the presidential election to incumbent President Buhari by over 3 million votes.

Asked in a recent interview with Punch what it is like to market Atiku, Afegbua said going by his last experience working with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) stalwart, he believes Atiku “doesn’t deserve to be looked upon as a candidate this time round”.

“Following President Buhari’s underperformance and spineless leadership, coupled with the sufferings and unemployment in the land, it would have been easier to dislodge him from power. As spokesmen, we worked hard to present to Nigerians a candidate who we thought had the capacity to manage the country better. Despite all the leadership shortcomings of Atiku Abubakar, he would have been better than Buhari in terms of understanding the issues, reaching out to every part of the country, and also being able to engage and dialogue on a number of issues. So, we put our all to it and at the end of the day, we lost,” Afegbua said.

“The painful aspect of that experience was the fact that Atiku abandoned us on the field and ran away to Dubai to recalibrate, while we were still here battling the APC power oligarchs, at the risk of our lives. It was later I heard he held a meeting with the president then, where he was promised to be compensated. Whether true or false, anything can happen in politics. The fact that we didn’t see him throughout the tribunal was something that diminished his profile in my own estimation. And it is the reason why I feel he doesn’t deserve to be looked upon as a candidate this time round. He has had his time, it is about time he called it quit in politics.”