Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Doyin Okupe has described the declarations by the former head of states General Muhammadu Buhari and former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar to contest the nation?s number one seat as a huge joke.
Okupe said both Buhari and Atiku are serial failures who cannot withstand Jonathan in 2015 if he decides to contest the presidential elections.
The presidential aide also frowned at an online report, which said the president was trying to use the excuse of the insurgency in the north east to elongate his tenure.
He said, ?this is not the president that would do a thing like that?.
Okupe told Vanguard that the president would make necessary consultation and make his decision known ?soon?.
Speaking on General Buhari and Atiku Abubakar?s declarations, Okupe said: ?You know Yoruba people have one proverb which says it is the biggest Masquerade that comes out last. The declaration by the opposition is not really something new. Most of the candidates of the opposition are serial failures. Atiku (Abubakar) has tried twice and has failed,(Gen Mohammadu) Buhari has done it four times and he has failed. If you present yourself for an election, first, second, third and fourth times, what new things are they bringing? Have they gone to school or are they bringing new things?
?We are absolutely unperturbed. The president is going to contest against serial losers. People who never win election. People who have no leadership quality and it is even now worse for them because this president has been given four years, during which he has demonstrated his administrative capability, efficiency and delivery. It is unarguable that these people in the APC, it is a new and good party, they would become relevant from 2019 upward, not now?, he said.
?This is something that is not true, this type of false information is quite characteristic and it is the hallmark of Sahara reporters in particular. But still, in order that the world is not misled, I want to state categorically here that there is no iota of truth whatsoever in that statement. There is nothing like that. And this is not the president that would do a thing like that and there is no reason whatsoever for this president to do that.
?This is the same president that, as you must have heard recently, over 12 million Nigerians have signed asking him to come out and run. All the stakeholders in his party, the PDP , have endorsed him and are actually asking him to come out and make his declaration to run and it is quite a logical thing to do because there is no reason of changing the winning team.
?Again, the issue also is that as it is everywhere in the world, endorsement itself is not undemocratic because it is a normal pattern in democratic parlance that when you have a sitting president. And he is interested in a rerun, usually he is given the first choice of refusal and the president is yet to make public his desire, but this news from Sahara reporters is absolutely untrue,it is falsehood and we deny it in all its entirety because it is part of the calculated attempts by the opposition to throw everything into the arena to embarrass this president?.
On when the president would formally make his intention known, the aide said it is ?my believe that it will be after due consideration that he will take an appropriate decision that would be in the larger interest of the party and the nation, but I don?t see this being too long from now
Topic: 2015: Buhari, Atiku are serial failures ? Okupe (Read 1432 times)
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March 04, 2015, 06:51:47 PM