Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar Says "PDP owes me"

A former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has said his
former political party, the Peoples Democratic Party,
owes him a debt of gratitude.
Abubakar, however, said he did not owe the ruling party
anything.
It will be recalled that the National Publicity Secretary of
the PDP, Chief Olisa Metuh, had recently said that
Abubakar owed the party a debt of gratitude for
providing him a political platform that helped him to
emerge as the former Vice President.
But the former Vice President said in a statement in
Abuja on Sunday, that contrary to the claim by the
leadership of the PDP, it was indeed his former party that
owed him a debt of thanks.
The former Vice President, who resigned his membership
of the PDP in February to join the All Progressives
Congress, noted that the insinuation being peddled by
Metuh that he was ungrateful to the PDP was a distortion
of history.
The statement particularly noted that neither Metuh nor
anyone currently in position of authority in the PDP today
was there when the PDP was formed.
He said, "If the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP
doesn't have the knowledge of how the party came into
being, then it will be in order that he goes into the
archives and read about the history of the party and the
roles certain individuals, particularly former Vice
President Atiku Abubakar played in building the party.
"For the avoidance of doubt, Atiku Abubakar does not
owe the PDP. Rather, it is the PDP that owes him a debt
of thanks. Where were Metuh and his paymasters when
the PDP was in its formative stage? If he and his
paymasters came as free riders into the party, that
shouldn't mean they have the licence to distort history.
"The demagogic outburst and the repeated innuendoes
by which the PDP has been nursing its wounds following
the exit of its founding fathers will do no good for the
party to reverse the trend of how it is fast losing
acceptability by the Nigerian people."
He said Metuh and his co-travellers in the PDP should
focus more on improving the lives of citizens, redressing
the parlous state of the nation's economy and stemming
the state of insecurity instead of distorting history.
He said, "Nigerians need good governance. They need to
be told how the only country we all call home can be
safe for each and every one of us. Nigerians need a
political party that will work on the parlous state of the
country's economy and restore financial confidence to
Nigerians who work hard to support their families. The
youths of Nigeria need a political party that can give
them a direction to the future.
"There are very many challenges besetting the country
today and it will be incongruous that a political party in
government will ignore these challenges and continue to
vituperate over individuals who have deserted its fold to
join forces with other political parties better suited to
provide solutions to the myriad of problems confronting
the country."
The former Vice President, who used the opportunity to
commiserate with the government and people of Kaduna,
Benue, Katsina and Borno states following the recent
spate of killings in their states, said the PDP and its
leadership must wake up to face the challenges ahead.
In his reaction, Metuh said though he would not
exchange words with Atiku, he however maintained that
he had been in the party since inception.
Source: The Punch
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone provided by Airtel Nigeria.