Atiku Jets off from Dubai to the UK Regardless of Crisis in PDP

The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar is reported to have travelled from Dubai to the United Kingdom (UK).

Atiku left Nigeria to Dubai a few days after clinching the PDP ticket for the 2023 election. This is also in spite of the deep crisis rocking the PDP over the emergence of Ifeanyi Okowa as his running mate regardless of the choice of majority of the party’s leaders.

The PDP leaders have openly expressed their displeasure over the choice of Okowa and how Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike was treated in the saga.

PDP BoT Chairman, Senator Walid Jibrin had disclosed that a reconciliation team to be headed by Atiku himself will soon get to work and visit aggrieved members as soon as he (Atiku) returns to Nigeria.

It is however, obvious that the former Vice President has no plans of coming back to Nigeria soon.

Sources quoted by Vanguard say that Atiku has gone to the UK for his Master’s Degree Convocation at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK.

The University’s convocation programme will hold in Chelmsford, Cambridge and Peterborough from Monday, 11 July until Friday, 29 July.

The PDP presidential flagbearer completed his Master’s degree in International Relations at the institution in November 2021.

Speaking on the continued absence of the former Vice President from the country, a PDP leader in Plateau State said “He was not in Ekiti, won’t he be in Osun too? How are we going to explain his absence? Or is it that he does not understand the importance of the Ekiti and Osun elections? Maybe he is feeling that after winning the primary, he has automatically won the main election.”

Also, a former member of the PDP National Working Committee expressed worries that even “during Sallah celebration, our presidential candidate, a Muslim, is not here to celebrate with our people. This is not too good because there is no other Eid-el-Kabir festival before the election in February, next year.“

He lamented further that Atiku appears disconnected from the people he wants to lead and called on the party leadership to quickly address the situation.

He said: “If this level of disenchantment by the former Vice President is allowed to grow beyond this level, it will be difficult to handle.

“Well meaning stakeholders of the party should wade in now so that we won’t have a repeat of 2015 and 2019,” he concluded.

The developing scenario has got many PDP stakeholders making reference to how Atiku left Nigeria after losing the 2019 presidential election and was away in Dubai for over seven months.

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Atiku Jets off from Dubai to the UK Regardless of Crisis in PDP