Name Them Economic Team, Not Campaign Team – Atiku, PDP Blasts Buhari, APC

Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in the 2019
election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, and the PDP, yesterday, questioned the
motive for the inclusion of two billionaire businessmen, Aliko Dangote
and Femi Otedola in the All Progressives Congress, APC, Presidential
Campaign Council. They described the move as an act of desperation on
the part of the president and the APC.

Atiku spoke through one of
the PDP Presidential Campaign image makers, Kassim Afegbua. Atiku said
as businessmen, the President ought to have included the duo in his
economic management team to avail him their wealth of knowledge on how
to create jobs, adding that listing them as campaign members shows that
President Buhari is out to blackmail the successful entrepreneurs. He
said: “These people are businessmen, not politicians. These are the kind
of people Nigerians expect to see in the economic management team
because of what they have done for this country.

“He (Buhari) is
simply out to blackmail them because by the time they fund his campaign,
he will turn around and call them corrupt businessmen. “Nigerians can
now see for themselves what we have been talking about all this while
and we call on them to vote out this grossly incompetent administration,
whose stock in trade is blackmail of perceived enemies.”

In a
statement issued yesterday by Kola Ologbondiyan, Director, Media and
Publicity of PPCO, the party said it was aware of the protests by some
eminent Nigerians, including foremost businessmen (Aliko Dangote and
Femi Otedola) who were named as members of the APC Campaign Council
without their consent, in a desperate bid to showcase an impression
that they are supporting Mr. President’s re-election bid.

“Our
party also has it on good authority that this ignoble scheme of
siphoning NDDC development fund to finance his campaign was the main
reason President Buhari foisted an unpopular leadership at the
management of the NDDC despite the protests by critical stakeholders in
all the states of the Niger Delta.”