•Says over reliance on bribing electorate will fail
Adedayo Akinwale in Abuja
Ahead of the February 25 presidential election, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) has said the north would not vote a “fake Muslim” in the name of a pretentious and mischievous Muslim-Muslim ticket.
The presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, a southern Muslim, chose the former Governor of Borno State, Kashim Shettima, a northern Muslim as his running mate in the forthcoming election.
The decision of the ruling party to float a Muslim-Muslim ticket had generated uproar in the country, while some Christians leaders within the party had to quit.
But, the Director of Strategic Communications, PDP PCC, Dele Momodu in a statement issued yesterday, said the Muslim-Muslim ticket “scam” was dead on arrival.
He said he had read with bemusement many of the polls about the forthcoming presidential election and came to the conclusion that the elitist polls had failed monumentally due to the over-reliance on technology in a largely illiterate population.
Momodu said he decided to help situate the forecasts based on the established political history of Nigeria and empirical data.
The PDP chieftain explained that the presidential candidate cannot depend totally on votes from outside his home base to win the forthcoming election.
He said it was a fact of history that whenever the south produced two strong candidates, the dominant northern candidate won, citing the situation in 1979 and 1983, when both Obafemi Awolowo and Nnamdi Azikiwe from the South contented alongside Shehu Shagari.
Momodu explained that Tinubu was far weaker today in the South-west and Awolowo was by far more formidable.
He described the presidential candidate of Labour Party, Peter Obi as the new Azikiwe –the first Governor General and President of Nigeria in the south-east, and the presidential candidate of New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP), Rabiu Kwankwaso as the current Aminu Kano.
Momodu predicted that the presidential candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar would dominate the north-east, north-west, north-central and the south-south, while Tinubu might pick a few states in the north and South-west but won’t have enough to win.
He noted that the bridges required to cross to victory took Atiku 30 years to build, saying Tinubu had not been able to lock down the entire South-West not to talk of the whole of Nigeria.
Momodu noted: “Over-reliance on bribing the electorates will fail. Hoping to rig brazenly will also fail spectacularly. I repeat, the entire north and the south-south will make Atiku the next President. Atiku will still be competitive in the South East and South West.
“Wherever Obi is number one in the east, Atiku will be number two. Wherever Tinubu is number one in the south-west, Atiku will be number two or vice versa.”
Momodu also predicted that Atiku would be the first to cross the line of recording 25 per cent in 24 states and would also get 25 per cent automatically in the 19 states of the northern regions and would pick six in south-south automatically.
He also forecasted that Atiku would get 25 percent in all of the five states in the south-east – a traditional base of the PDP and would get same in the south-west.
Momodu noted: “I do not know of any state PDP will not record 25 per cent and eventually win the overall popular votes. Nigeria has become so divided that the people are going to vote majorly along ethnic lines as well as primordial sentiments.
“The north will not vote a “fake Muslim” in the name of a pretentious and mischievous Muslim/Muslim ticket. The scam is dead on arrival.”
