The Director of Strategic Communications for the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Festus Keyamo (SAN), has said that candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar could not have won the February 23 presidential election.
He made this known in an interview published by Sunday Punch against the backdrop of Atiku’s threat to challenge his loss to incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari in court.
The PDP had accused Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC) of rigging the election.
However, Keyamo said that Atiku could not have expected to win when he got massive support in only two of the nation’s six geopolitical zones.
The senior lawyer said:
By raising the allegation of rigging , the PDP is only trying to play to the gallery and satisfy the emotion of their supporters. Let me tell you why Atiku could never have won that election . You cannot win election in this country by only locking down two regions. Historically, we have known that ; not even by locking down the two largest regions in this country . If you don ’t expand your scope beyond two regions, you are bound to fail. What happened ? Atiku got 5/ 5 in the South- East , 6 / 6 in the South -South . In the South -West , we got 4 / 6 ; in the North -Central , 4 / 6; in the North -West , we got 7 / 7 and North – East , which is the region of Atiku , we got 4 / 6. You can see that he could not effectively go beyond the South-East and South -South. Even when Buhari was at the peak of the opposition , when he locked the North -West and North – East , despite the rigging by the PDP , he still could not get into Presidency . Not until he forged an alliance with the South -West , led by the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria , that he clinched the Presidency . We have made our calculation and I will tell you if we do this election 100 times , Atiku will lose with the kind of demographic calculation on the table . He was the one that pushed himself into this sectional endorsement whereas Buhari was pushing for a pan -Nigeria mandate . Who is more experienced in this if you look at the two of them ? You can ’t compare the experience of Buhari with that of Atiku who has consistently contested presidential elections since 2003 . When Atiku was looking for the tickets of the big political parties, Buhari pulled out to form his own. I want to challenge Atiku ; when he was denied ticket all over , why didn ’t he pull out to form his own party if he knew he was that popular? They ( PDP ) wanted to scam Nigerians with the meaningless phrase , ‘Getting Nigeria to work again ’ . Nigerians have rejected them ; now they want to be scamming their supporters. Their supporters should shine their eyes . Let me tell you why their analysis is wrong. The Buhari votes have consistently remained the same even when he was in the opposition and there was no card reader . Then, he was not in government . You will expect that his figure should increase now that he is in government but unfortunately , his votes reduced across the country to show you the efficiency of the card reader . When the PDP was in power , their figures kept increasing up to the point the card reader was introduced . Then, their figure dropped drastically . For us as the opposition , Buhari , without the smart card reader , always got between 10 million and 12 million votes in the North . When the smart card reader was introduced , he still got the same figure ; this is scientific . Let us be honest with ourselves . All the claims by the PDP are complete nonsense and just to raise the hope of their supporters. They are free to take the battle anywhere , we will be prepared to meet them anywhere but they should know there is a government in place . They should also know that Nigeria is bigger than all of us . In term of street credibility, Atiku can ’t match Buhari . They can ’t even take the battle to the streets because they don ’t have acceptance . Nigerians overwhelmingly voted Buhari . If they want to go to court, we will meet them there .
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