The presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu had taken a jab at the Peoples Democratic Party’s presidential candidate Alhaji Atiku Abubakar whom he said he “rescued” from former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Speaking on Monday at a campaign rally in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, the former governor of Lagos State said Abubakar and his party are just about “stomach infrastructure”.
“They don’t have a mandate; what they have is ice cream. It has melted. I am the one that rescued him from Obasanjo who wanted to roast him like goat meat,” he said.
“He ran away to Dubai, and when the election came again, he came for stomach infrastructure. He came to Lagos. We rehabilitated him and gave him a ticket but he wasted it and used it to collect money.
“He faced Obasanjo, faced Buhari, and failed. He failed with Jonathan. He failed in all his subjects.
“You better watch him before he starts selling the little palm trees that you have left. What we need to do is to develop our country. We have enough gas reservoirs on our land.
“Akwa Ibom, you will not suffer again. That boy [Emmanuel Udom] that brought Atiku here, that calls himself governor, tell him enough is enough. He lived in my backyard in Lagos. If not that we are one, I’d have driven him home.”
Recall that former Vice President Abubakar had a running battle with his former principal for years in which former President Olusegun Obasanjo called him a shameless liar in his book ‘Olusegun Obasanjo: My Watch.’
“Those who can be regarded as influential and who has publicly accused me of allegedly manipulating a third term were Atiku Abubakar, who is a blatant and shameless liar, who was behind the whole episode of turning wholesome constitutional amendment efforts of the National Assembly to a futile exercise and as a means of riding on its ashes to be Nigerian President,” Mr. Obasanjo said.
“Third term was not my agenda or intention although I would not say I didn’t know about it. I didn’t mastermind the third term. Those who were telling me to go on were the governors that were going to benefit from it.”
Both men reconciled in the build-up to the 2019 general election which led Obasanjo to endorse Abubakar for the presidency during the 2019 polls, saying that he was better than incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari.
However, for the 2023 presidential election, Obasanjo has since thrown his weight behind Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP).
