The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has warned the Igbo community against voting for the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar to avoid years of misrule.
Abubakar, a former Nigerian vice president was endorsed by the leaders of the region on Wednesday. The region is a stronghold of the opposition party.
The APC said the Igbo people were victims of PDP’s “misrule” for 16 years, urging the south-easterners to resist the PDP and Atiku from returning to power.
“The purported endorsement of Atiku and PDP by some leaders of the south-east for the 2019 general election is an affront to the the Igbo people who were frontline victims of the 16 years of the PDP misrule,” APC spokesman Lanre Issa-Onilu said in a statement.
“The APC considers Atiku and his PDP co-travellers as people who have lost any sense of shame.”
Prior to the 2015 presidential election which brought APC to power, Abubakar contested the party’s ticket with current president Muhammadu Buhari and lost.
Buhari in 2015 campaigned on three focus areas of security, economy and fight against corruption. Three years after, the APC said the president’s performance was visible in Igbo land.
“It will be interesting to know what the PDP will be telling the Igbo people during the campaign. The South East people have three and a half years of visible progress in terms of massive infrastructure and.”
“The thousands of common people who are benefiting from the social programme investments under APC to compare to the PDP’s 16 years of retrogression,” Issa-Onilu said.
“We in APC are confident that the Igbo won’t be fooled by any group, by whatever name, to sell a thoroughly discredited party like the PDP to the very discerning Igbo people.”
An elder statesman and Igbo leader, Ben Nwabueze (SAN), who received Abubakar in Enugu, said he would live to witness the former vice-president become president of Nigeria.
