Atiku’s Past ‘Sins’
Tinubu is yet to forgive Atiku for abandoning the opposition ranks in 2010 and returning to the PDP in order to contest the 2011 presidential election after the death of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adau. When Atiku fell out with Obasanjo toward the end of their tenure in 2007, Tinubu provided him a platform to contest in the presidential race, having been completely blocked from the PDP.
Atiku joined the Action Congress, ran for the election, lost to Yar’Adua but stayed back in the party to build a credible opposition to the PDP ahead of the 2011 elections. However, when Yar’Adau died, Atiku went back to the PDP, perhaps calculating that his interests were better served by the party in power. But he lost to Jonathan in the primary.
He still remained in the PDP, maybe believing that Jonathan would do only one term, but when it became clear that Jonathan was going to run again, he defected to APC, but Tinubu was not impressed. In fact, the impression of Atiku worsened in the polity.
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“He wants to reap where he did not sow. If he had remained with us in 2011, the party would have been built around him, no doubt about that. He would have had a fair chance. But we are also thinking he is a desperate politician by going up and down, back and forth. More so, Nigerians perceive him differently when it comes to corruption. It was always going to be a problem for us,” an APC chieftain from Lagos told TheCable, maintaining that Tinubu had nothing personal against Atiku.
