Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar says presidential candidate of the Labour Party cannot win next year’s presidential election, noting that the former Anambra will require massive votes from the northern part of the country to win.
Unfortunately for Obi, Atiku said many northerners are not on the social media where the former governor has received massive supports.
Atiku spoke just few days after former Governor of Kano state, Rabiu Musa Kwakwanso, said northerners will not cast their vote for the LP candidate. Kwakwanso, a former minister of Defence has received robust condemnations from not a few Nigerians for the comment.
Two days ago, Governor Nasir Elrufai of Kaduna state also prevented supporters of Obi to use the Arewa House in Kaduna for a scheduled summit.
Speaking on Arise television on Friday, Atiku who’s the presidential candidate of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP said Obi cannot pull any surprise in next year’s election without northern votes.
“I really don’t expect the Labour Party to take as many votes from the PDP as people are suggesting. We could have seen it in the last election in Osun state. What is the performance of the Labour Party?
“This is a party that doesn’t have a governor, doesn’t have members of the national assembly, doesn’t have state assembly members, and politics in this country depends on the structures you have at the various levels — at the local government level, at the state level, and at the national level.”
“So, it is very difficult to expect a miracle to happen, simply because Peter Obi is in the Labour Party. After all, they were saying through social media, they had more than one million votes in Osun state,” he said.
“But how many votes turned for the Labour Party? And then again, mark you, you’re talking about social media. In the north, 90 percent of our people are not tuned to social media,” Atiku said.
Obi had on Tuesday said his supporters on the social media will be used as ‘structures’ to win the presidency next year, in response to critics who have taunted him for depending on netizens to win the election in 2023.
“I have said it before when people talk about structure, that my structure [is] the 100 million Nigerians living in poverty. That’s five million people unemployed.
“Those people who are finding it difficult to live. Nigerians are here today spending over 100% of their money on feeding, that is my structure. And above all, the most important structure is the Almighty God,” the LP candidate said.
