Abuja natives, under the auspices of the Indigenous People Forum, have said they won’t support the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, in his 2023 presidential bid.
Business Hallmark reported that the group made this known in press statement on Monday, while dissociating themselves from the purported endorsement of the former vice president by the people of Abuja.
The statement, which was signed by its secretary, Comrade Danjuma Jose Danisa, read that the Abuja people have not endorsed any presidential candidate, insisting that the purported endorsement was not only a lie but also deceit and desecration of their traditional rulers.
It read in part, “We, the original inhabitants want to make it clear that Atiku Abubakar can never get our supports if he continues to deceive and disrespect our traditional rulers, the way he has been doing.
“Nigeria deserves a president who is not arrogant, the country needs a personality that would not believe in creating disunity everywhere he goes.
“Atiku by his actions,has not shown us the kind of leadership we should expect from him should he win the seat he’s aspiring for. All we have seen is that he has always strived to build castle in the air and this will spell doom for this country if Nigerians make mistake of electing him as president comes 2023.”
The group affirmed that they can never fall for Atiku’s antics anymore.
The statement continued, “We are people of integrity who can not just be bought or railroaded by a money bag politician.
“IPF outrightly condemns this act of desperation on the part of Atiku because how will it be possible to barb a head when the owner of the head is not around? You claimed to have come to Abuja but you did not deem it fit to visit any of the palaces of our royal fathers, then who are you relating with if you choose to always ignore our royal fathers?
“Therefore, for the sake of clarity, we, the original Abuja inhabitants have never taken a decision on whom to work for in 2023 talk less of endorsing someone who is full of himself and disrespect our fathers.
“Meanwhile, we are still maintaining our stand that it is our ‘charter of demands’ that would lead us to where our supports will tilt to. So, it is an insult to the sensibilities of our people to hear that somebody endorses Atiku without signing our charter of demands.
“This is a total disregard to the entire original inhabitants for Atiku to have claimed that FCT indigenous people have endorsed him, what a big lie from someone who is dreaming to rule this country.
“From records, Atiku was the vice president for good eight years here in Abuja, can he remember a day he visited any of our traditional rulers talk less of consulting them, the answer is NO and now he repeated the same by not visiting them in their palaces.
“We therefore want Nigerians to help us ask Atiku if it is not a norm during campaigns like this for a presidential candidate to visit the royal fathers of that state after a visit to the state governor, why Atiku keeps treating our royal fathers with contempt every time?
“And to worsen the situation, the following day Atiku came to Abuja, he visited our neighborhood, Nassarrawa state and he was seeing visiting a palace. So, FCT indigenous people are not fools and we hold our royal fathers in high esteem and for this we can never give our support to someone who does not respect our fathers.
“We have seen on many occasions where president Muhammadu Buhari would come down from his exalted position to meet and speak with our people through our traditional rulers most especially Ona of Abaji.
“And this is reason, we are using this opportunity to sound a note of warning again that enough of railroading our traditional rulers to achieve their selfish interests.
“Deceiving our traditional rulers into a political meeting will never be welcome again because we interpret this as a deceit, lack of respect for the royal fathers and a total disdain for original inhabitants of Abuja.”
