Atiku Abubakar’s campaign for president of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has asserted that some candidates for the All Progressives Congress (APC), the party in power, are opposed to Bola Tinubu’s meeting with the five PDP governors who feel they have been wronged.
According to reports that surfaced last week, Tinubu met with the governors of Rivers, Benue, Oyo, Enugu and Abia at his London home. He also reportedly met with Governors Nyesom Wike and Samuel Ortom. The APC presidential contender, however, refuted rumors of the gathering and claimed he was in Saudi Arabia for the Hajj.
Phrank Shaibu, Atiku Abubakar’s special assistant for public communication, accused Tinubu of lying about his meeting with the G-5 governors in a message to reporters on Sunday. He asserted that aspirants for the APC, such as Senator Teslim Folarin, have vowed to oppose any agreement with PDP governors that may jeopardize his bid to lead Oyo State.
Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), blatantly lied when he said he had never met the G-5 Governors in London. He was apparently upset by the responses to his ignoble meeting with them. Intriguingly, the brazen governor Nyesom Wike had declined to deny ever seeing Tinubu, instead stating, “They stated we had a meeting with so and so. What’s the matter? Wike would have been the one to reject it if the G-5 had never met with Tinubu, I boldly assert.
Curiously, two spokesmen for the APC Presidential campaign, Festus Keyamo and Femi Fani-Kayode, turned to social media to celebrate the support Tinubu would be receiving from the G-5 when the news of the meeting, which was confirmed by multiple reliable media outlets, was trending. “The endorsement and declaration of support that Bola Ahmed Tinubu would have from at least six (not just five) governors from the PDP in January will finally put to rest the delusion that Atiku will persistently harbor about winning the 2023 Presidential election,” Fani-Kayode wrote on Facebook.
It’s odd that Tinubu thought it was time to release a statement denying the meeting ever took place three full days following reports of the meeting. The G-5 and Tinubu all chose to travel to London at the same time and to leave at the same time, with Tinubu traveling to Saudi Arabia and the other governors returning to Nigeria. This is an incredibly coincidental arrangement.
Coincidentally, Tinubu had also denied plans to meet with the G-5 in August, but Wike later released a statement confirming that they had met individually with Tinubu and the other contenders. Therefore, Tinubu’s most recent denial must to be disregarded as a fabrication. Nigerians may be wondering why Tinubu would deny that such a meeting ever took place. The answer is that the meeting’s specifics are too confusing, and the APC candidates in the five states are retaliating.
Except for Governor Wike, all of the G-5 governors are running for office. The APC candidates for governor and the National Assembly in the affected states, where the G-5 governors are in power, are fighting back. Senator Teslim Folarin of Oyo is reportedly upset over a scheme to trade off his position as the APC governorship candidate. In Abia, Enugu, Benue, and of course Rivers State, the scenario is the same.