According to Dino Melaye, a spokesperson for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential Campaign Management Committee, Atiku Abubakar would foster a sense of and a feeling of national unity among all Nigerians if he were to be elected president in 2023.
Melaye referred to the former vice president of Nigeria as the soothing balm for the healing of "the broken trust, the battered economy, and the basterdised political fabric of Nigeria" in a news release titled "Our country needs healing- Atiku is the balm," where he also made fun of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
The statement reads: “Our dear country is haemorrhaging on all sides, ranging from social to political and economic. The level of division and distrust between our political geography, economic climate and the social weather are palpable. Our country is, therefore, broken along many fault lines, but there is light at the end of the tunnel, because just as our country needs healing, Atiku is available as the balm.
“There’s a rippling expansion of conflicts. The crisis of confidence between the government and the governed manifests as the current APC administration operates an ideology that fails to provide leadership in crisis, hope in despair, assurance in fear and opportunities in scarcity. This is why Nigeria must severe any umbilical cord that ties it to the APC under any disguise. The Party and its operators are set in their ways. They claimed to be harbingers of change, but they have become impervious to change. Like the Bourbons, they have learnt nothing, and have forgotten nothing.
“Observers of the Nigerian political landscape will appreciate that Atiku has stood out as a focused leader, riding the storm of a creative tension with equanimity, temperance and accommodation. This is demonstrable leadership. This is the benefit of cognate experience and the gains of reflection, which dictates the appropriate application of attitude to prevailing circumstances.
“As a consummate political strategist, an engaging listener, a disarming deployer of charm offensive and a beacon of hope, Atiku, who bears the flag of PDP, has commenced his campaign, moving round and dispensing the assurance that the years of the locusts are over.
“As a politician who is at home everywhere in Nigeria, Atiku demonstrated his universal home connection by flagging off his presidential campaign in Uyo on October 10, 2022. The ceremony did not only attract a huge crowd, it was a rainbow coalition of party enthusiasts, who in their varied but creatively combined colours signified the metaphor of Nigeria as a great country of various shades of diversity, but positioned for greatness when all the shades are turned into substance.
“Atiku can weave the disjointed parts together. He’s at home with all genders, all tribes, all faiths, all strata and all People. This is why he is focused on working for harmony, inclusiveness, integration, cohesion and nationalism.
“Nigeria cannot afford to gamble this time; by making a wrong choice. Good enough, a Presidential candidate has already defined his own self-centred philosophy, focusing on himself and his empire. This self-agenda can only be a recipe for further fragmentation and alienation in a country that requires a fast recovery from narrow pursuits.
“A broad minded, broadly connected and broadly accepted candidate like Atiku, who has his ears to the ground everywhere, his nose for good governance and his eyes on socio-economic transformation is what Nigeria needs at this point of its evolution.
“Atiku is the soothing balm for the healing of the broken trust, the battered economy and the basterdised political fabric of Nigeria.”