Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in the 2019 election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, and the PDP, yesterday, questioned the motive for the inclusion of two billionaire businessmen, Aliko Dangote and Femi Otedola in the All Progressives Congress, APC, Presidential Campaign Council. They described the move as an act of desperation on the part of the president and the APC.

Atiku spoke through one of the PDP Presidential Campaign image makers, Kassim Afegbua. Atiku said as businessmen, the President ought to have included the duo in his economic management team to avail him their wealth of knowledge on how to create jobs, adding that listing them as campaign members shows that President Buhari is out to blackmail the successful entrepreneurs. He said: “These people are businessmen, not politicians. These are the kind of people Nigerians expect to see in the economic management team because of what they have done for this country.

“He (Buhari) is simply out to blackmail them because by the time they fund his campaign, he will turn around and call them corrupt businessmen. “Nigerians can now see for themselves what we have been talking about all this while and we call on them to vote out this grossly incompetent administration, whose stock in trade is blackmail of perceived enemies.”

In a statement issued yesterday by Kola Ologbondiyan, Director, Media and Publicity of PPCO, the party said it was aware of the protests by some eminent Nigerians, including foremost businessmen (Aliko Dangote and Femi Otedola) who were named as members of the APC Campaign Council without their consent, in a desperate bid to showcase an impression that they are supporting Mr. President’s re-election bid.

“Our party also has it on good authority that this ignoble scheme of siphoning NDDC development fund to finance his campaign was the main reason President Buhari foisted an unpopular leadership at the management of the NDDC despite the protests by critical stakeholders in all the states of the Niger Delta.”

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