Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has been labeled a seasoned election loser by Katsina state governor Aminu Masari.
Atiku, the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) presidential candidate for the elections of 2023, has tried unsuccessfully to win the presidency multiple times.
Ironically, Atiku and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, one of his key rivals in the 2023 election, collaborated in 2007 to overthrow the PDP. However, late President Umaru Yar’dua won the election, and Atiku, then Vice President, ran under the banner of the Action Congress, which Tinubu established.
In his most recent bid for the presidency, Atiku lost to President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019.
While featuring as a guest on Journalists Hangout, a TVC current affairs program, on Wednesday evening, Masari taunted the PDP presidential candidate, saying, “Atiku is a formidable force, but Tinubu is a greater force. Atiku is a veteran of election contests and a veteran loser. He will lose again.”
Masari also dismissed Peter Obi, Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party, whom he described as an unknown quantity.
“I don’t know Obi. How many Katsina people know Obi?” Who is better than Tinubu? We are talking of a presidential candidate of Nigeria that cuts through all barriers—tribal, regional, and religious, name it.
Asked if Katsina people had bought into the Tinubu project, Governor Masari said, “Tinubu will be next president Insha Allah. Katsina people have bought into it. The people know his role in 2015 when President Buhari was elected into office. They know his role in 2019, when Buhari was re-elected. We people of Katsina are not ingrates.”
Masari said the insecurity problems affecting some sections of the state would not affect the outcome of the 2023 election.
“APC is still the party to beat. Insecurity is not only a Nigerian problem. Niger is not secure. Mali is not secure, Central Africa is not secure. There is a global insecurity problem,” he said.