FORMER Vice President Atiku Abubakar has declared that he would run as president in the next general election.
Abubakar disclosed this on Sunday, August 24, by Tunde Olusunle, his spokesperson during the 2023 presidential election.
Abubakar’s comment followed a recent statement by Ola Olateju at the Achievers University when he represented the former vice president at an event.
Olateju, a professor, said the former vice president had yet to make up his mind on the 2027 poll.
He suggested that Abubakar was more focused on improving Nigeria than on the presidency.
Reacting to the claim through his aide during an interview with ThisDay on Sunday, Abubakar said through Olusunle, “When people stand in for me at events, we preview my thoughts on the instant subject. In this particular instance, there was no engagement with me to distil my thoughts. Prof. Olateju was not speaking for me.
“I will run in 2027. Nigeria needs to be decisively rescued from the intensive care unit it has been consigned to. The degeneration in our country, the level of poverty and pain, the anguish, is unacceptable.”
He added that the degeneration, level of poverty, pain and anguish in the country was unacceptable.
According to him, the reaction was also to calm the frayed nerves of his teeming supporters.
He assured that the coalition would shock the world in the 2027 presidential election despite efforts by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to ridicule it.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate in the 2023 condemned what he referred to as unprecedented ‘theft’ under the President Bola Tinubu’s administration, emphasising the urgent need to ‘rescue’ the country from its leaders.
The ICIR reported that Abubakar resigned again from the PDP on July 14.
Abubakar, who recently said he was not desperate to be Nigeria’s president, has contested six times for the same position and has lost in all.
A reporter with the ICIR
A Journalist with a niche for quality and a promoter of good governance