The Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) has rejected former vice president and presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 presidential election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, as the rallying point of the opposition parties in Nigeria ahead of 2027 general election.
In a statement by the national secretary of CUPP, High Chief Peter Ameh, which was made available to journalists in Abuja on Saturday, he said the attention of CUPP had been drawn to a newspaper publication (Not LEADERSHIP), proposing and projecting former Vice President Atiku Abubakar by one of his aides to lead the opposition political parties in Nigeria ahead of the next election circle.
He said, “We in CUPP hereby wish to disassociate ourselves from that proposition because of the reasons mentioned hereunder.”
Listing the reasons for rejecting Atiku, the opposition national scribe said, “CUPP had worked with Atiku in the past only to realise later that we worked for a candidate who cared for himself, his ambition, and his own ambition only without giving a hoot for other coalition partners. It is also in the public sphere that former Vice President Atiku has severally professed his aversion for multi-party democracy. He is a fan of either one or two party systems only.”
He recalled that in the run-up to 2019 general election, more than 35 political parties went into a coalition, which led to the formation of CUPP as it is today with PDP and former Vice President Atiku as its consensus presidential candidate, noting that
CUPP worked tirelessly for the former Vice President to become the president of Nigeria, and lost at the polls.
He said after Atiku lost, he turned his back on his coalition partners, and practically threw the coalition parties under the bus and ran away to Dubai only to surface towards the 2023 general election.
“We remember sending a delegation of the coalition to him to seek his opinion on the way forward for the opposition parties, only to be told by him that he did not believe and had never believed in multi-party democracy which was the bedrock of constitutional democracy and the reason for the existence of the parties that went into that coalition with him,” he added.
CUPP queried how a man who is so enamoured with a one-party system and had severally professed his aversion for multi-party democracy lead and be nominated to be in the forefront of such struggle.
“CUPP sees this as trying to fly a wingless kite, which can never be airborne. He is trying to rally the opposition parties to take upon themselves a fight (install him as the president), which he has tried severally and failed.
“CUPP hereby urges the former Vice President Atiku to leave the stage now that the ovation is high. He has done his beat as a consummate politician, he has contested severally for the office of the president without victory, the time is now ripe for him to quit the stage for the younger elements and start portraying himself as a statesman that he truly is,” the statement read.
