Spokesman of Atiku-Okowa Presidential Campaign Council, Daniel Bwala, insisted yesterday that his principal and former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, has the best chance to win next month’s election, saying some governors and senators elected on the platform of ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, in the north were quietly working for the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, candidate.

His claim was, however, dismissed by Nasarawa State governor, Abdullahi Sule, who said APC governors, especially those in the north, were solidly behind the party’s presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.

But speaking in an interview on a live Television yesterday, Bwala said: ”11 northern APC governors and I think 35 to 37 senators are quietly working for Atiku.

”If you noticed lately, at APC presidential campaigns, when they say Nigeria, the crowd will respond, saying Atiku. This is why in their last campaign in Kano on Wednesday, they stopped saying Nigeria because they know the crowd will definitely respond by saying Atiku.”

Pressed to name some of the APC governors working for Atiku, he refused, saying ” even my four-yr-old son knows that you don’t reveal such information.”

He said this year’s presidential election was Atiku’s to win, adding that Atiku was firmly on the ground in the North East and North Central.

Asked to react to claims by the APC that Obasanjo’s endorsement of Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, had further damaged the chances of PDP in the election, Bwala said the ruling party was definitely the one that would suffer from it, saying the Mulsim-Mulsim ticket of the APC would be its albatross in the election.

Apparently replying to Bwala, Governor Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa State dismissed his claim, saying it was not only untrue but also merely an antic of the opposition.

Sule, who spoke when he met with the state party officials, members of his campaign council, as well as elected and appointed government officials, at Government House, Keffi, also blamed the development on those he referred to as parasites in government who were bent on painting APC governors black in their bid to curry favour from Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu.

According to him, there is no reason for any APC governor from the North to want to meet with Atiku,, considering the fact that it was the same Northern APC governors that stood firm in order for the seat of the president to return to the South, which paved the way for the emergence of Tinubu.

“Nobody is currently under pressure to ensure that Tinubu wins the presidential election more than the Northern APC governors.

“These lies are coming from two categories of people. One is the opposition which is doing everything possible to distract us because nobody wants Asiwaju to win this election more than the APC governors from the North.

“After Baba held this office for eight years, with the help of the South, if today we say we still want to hold on to the position, the world will not respect Northerners, that was our only reason. And not everybody was with us on this page but God so kind, we had a President who listens and he listened to us and, of course, we succeeded and Asiwaju takes the position,” he stated.

The governor added that the second category of people propagating the falsehood were those he described as parasites in government seeking favours from Tinubu.

He said: “They are people that have never lived without government, they can’t survive without government and they want to be relevant in every government. So they want to make Tinubu now look like they are the nice people and the governors are the bad people, the governors that fought for him to be there,” he stated.

The Nasarawa state governor urged the presidential candidate of the APC, Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, to be wary of those propagating the falsehood

“I keep telling Asiwaju and I will continue to tell him, nobody among these parasites understands Atiku more than you. If any governor is meeting Atiku privately in his house, you Asiwaju should know better.

”Don’t listen to them and don’t allow yourself to be carried away. If anybody wants you to win this election, it’s the APC Northern governors,” Sule declared. (Vanguard)

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