Regina Ogwuche
A former Managing Director of News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), and Director General of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Door-to-Door Campaign in Delta State, Ima Niboro Wednesday insisted that it was statistically impossible for Atiku to have won last Saturday’s presidential election.
According to a statement made available to THISDAY, Niboro said: “As at the day of elections, APC was in control of 22 states, while the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) controlled 13. No governor would surrender his state to the opposition because the template of the presidential elections would be the same with the coming gubernatorial elections.”
Niboro furher explained that the votes in the presidential election were consistent with the structural realities of Nigeria’s party politics.
He stated that Sokoto and Gombe States went inevitably to the APC because the structures that emplaced those PDP governors were actually and presently APC both in content and character.
He attributed the fall of Dr. Bukola Saraki and PDP in Kwara State to a protest movement, marshaled by no less than his blood sister, Gbemi, in broad alliance with the ‘Oto’ge movement, Alhaji Lai Mohammed and the wealthy and politically savvy Abdulrasaq family.
Speaking further,he said: “ Take Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom and Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta State. These are no doubt popular grassroots politicians and former two term governors. Both, of APC, just lost to PDP and no one is talking about it. Why did they lose? Simply because the structures that undergird the politics of Akwa Ibom and Delta States are still powerfully PDP, even though the APC is making greater inroads every day.
“I urge Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and the PDP to emulate former President Jonathan and take the moral high road. It is not too late for them to congratulate President Buhari, reorganise their party, win over more governors, and challenge the APC for the presidency in 2023,” he added.
