Atiku Urges Electorates to Curb Tribalism in Electing their Leaders

Former vice president, Alhaji Abubakar Atiku has urged the electorates to curb tribalism in choosing and electing their leaders.
He described tribalism as the bane of national progress and a malignant disease that must be shunned at all cost by all particularly the common masses.
According to him, the elites stand out as the most culpable culprit fostering tribalism as a divisive gimmick to set one tribe against the other instead of seeing each and every one as one – united by one single indivisible nation.

In a statement by Kola Johnson in Abuja, Atiku said the end-point of this divisive antic is geared to achieving their political ambition by asking their fellow tribesmen not to vote for a particular political contestant ‘for being so unfortunate to have hailed from another tribe’ rather than assess him by his sterling qualities.

Atiku in the statement said: “Your exclusive point of focus must necessarily bother on the competence of the person based on his antecedents amongst his numerous qualities rather than what tribe or ethnic group he hailed from. In this coming election, I beseech you all as my esteemed fellow compatriots to vote according to your conscience and never ever allow anyone to subject you to the perverted delusion that you must not vote for a particular candidate just because he is Hausa, Igbo or Yoruba.

‘”Even amongst ourselves let us begin to cultivate our relationship not on the incidental question of tribe but as common brothers and sisters united as fellow compatriot through our common belonging to one and indivisible nation. If I were to focus solely on tribe,I would certainly not have been able to marry my Yoruba-born wife in the 70s, who beyond my wildest imagination has come to be my Jewel of inestimable value.” he stated further.
Looking back to the earliest epoch of the attainment of Independence, he remarked in comparative appraisal that the first republic stands out even till today as the golden moment in the annals of Nigerian political history.

According to him, politicians of those days were relatively much better off in terms of integrity and achievements at least compared with political actors of the Second Republic, till the contemporary civilian dispensation.”

But unfortunately, the venomous cankerworm of tribalism which dominated the politics of that era proved to be the irresistible force which in its invincibility, devastated that otherwise memorable era and brought it to a grinding halt from which it never recovered till date, contended the former PDP presidential candidate.

Continuing, he added:” This is to pinpoint in poignantly clear terms the limitless havoc inherent in the monstrous scourge of tribalism which we must all avoid like a plague. Let us all live like one single united family in peace, harmony and mutual co-existence, and build this nation to the visionary dream of our founding fathers.”