Gang Up Against Atiku In APC Thickens

By Baron Ike
Except something that looks like a miracle happens, coupled with fresh political alignments to deal with grey matters in the leadership of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), former Vice President Atiku Abubakar may be on his way out of the party to save his name.
This is because there is huge gang up against Atiku master-minded by key members of the APC who think that his domineering image could rob them of their political aspirations in 2019.
Though Atiku, the Waziri Adamawa is yet to indicate interest in running for the presidency again on the platform of any political party, armadanews.com got it on good authority that he is in the race, but the platform is not yet known.
There are insinuations Atiku has started romancing with his former party, the People’s Political Party (PDP), however, the rumour is said to be neither here nor there as the wealthy strongman of Nigerian politics “has not told anyone in PDP that he is looking for the party’s ticket,” one of his associates told this newspaper.
One thing the source said, though, is that the APC where Atiku worked hard with other progressives to bring into power has fractured to the extent that they now see him as more or less an outsider because of the critical leadership deficits which the party has failed to address.
Atiku has remained in the forefront of seeking for the restructuring of the country of late before other leaders keyed into it. He is also not very comfortable with the way the economy of the country is being handled that seems to have caused more hardship on the citizenry.
But all these observations have been interpreted within the APC to mean he is working at cross purposes with the sitting President Muhammadu Buhari and the party’s leadership.
Said our source: “But in all these, nobody can summon the courage to tell Atiku anything because they know the stuff he is made of. It started with the constitution of the Board of Trustees (BoT) of the party which they have played politics with for more than two years of coming into office.
“Besides, some members of the party who are political rookies have been used in one way or the other to make incendiary comments on Atiku with the thinking he would join issues with them. They make comments like APC members who just joined from the PDP being the ones causing problems and so on. Remember the insult that came from the Kaduna State Governor Nasir el-Rufai until Atiku placed him where he rightly belongs.”
Some members of the APC have also interpreted the lectures Atiku had given in parts of the country as political alliances ahead of 2019.
National Chairman of the APC, John Odigie-Oyegun recently said that the National Working Committee (NWC) has worked assiduously to ensure the unity of the party that was created out of other progressive-minded parties during the 2013 merger.
Oyegun said: “The leadership of the Party, in this case the National Working Committee (NWC) has tried to the best of its ability to do the difficult process of welding together the Party that was created out of three, four other Parties. It has not been easy as you very well know. But we thank God that by and large, it has been a significant success.”