The All Progressives Congress (APC) has challenged Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to come clean on his health status and speak about corruption allegations against him.
Bayo Onanuga, the spokesman for the APC Presidential Campaign Council (PCC), threw the challenge in a statement issued on Wednesday.
“It’s time for Atiku Abubakar, the 76-year-old presidential candidate of the PDP to come clean over two issues beclouding his campaign. His health status and his scandalous confession of how he colluded with his former boss, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo to fleece the Nigerian treasury, using Special Purpose Vehicles as vice-president in 1999,” the statement said. “If Atiku has some modicum of honour, he ought to have stepped down from the presidential race that he is bound to lose again.”
This, he added, was especially because of the release of his audio clip where he “provided a vivid explanation into the modus operandi of his legendary corruption.’’
Mr Onanuga noted that so far, there had been no notable response from Mr Abubakar’s camp about the disturbing revelation, except for a futile attempt to disown the whistleblower, Michael Achimugu, an erstwhile media consultant to the former vice-president.
The APC presidential campaign spokesman noted also that Nigerians were appalled that Mr Abubakar and the PDP merely shrugged off the audio leak.
He urged Nigerians to hold Mr Abubakar accountable by rejecting him at the polls in February.
“Atiku is also not talking about his health status even when his hirelings daily make futile attempts to divert public attention to his main rival by cooking up lies upon lies. Whereas Atiku is the candidate that Nigerians should be sorely worried about, the lies of several years and the various diversionary tactics are no longer sustainable,” said the statement.