Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has narrated how he turned down the offer made by the National Leader of the All Progressive Congress, APC, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to be his running mate in the 2007 Presidential Election.
Addressing the Board of Trustees members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) at a meeting on Tuesday, Atiku said the opposition party should not be coerced to accept zoning in the 2023 presidency race.
He said, “Some say the South-East have not been given the chance. When I joined the Action Congress (AC) which my friend Bola (Tinubu) set up, he gave me a set of conditions for giving me the ticket, one of which was that I should make him the Vice President. I said no, ‘I’m not going to make you Vice President,’ instead, I took Senator Ben Obi,” Atiku said.
Tinubu is currently one of the presidential aspirants of the ruling APC, while Atiku is one of the major contenders for the PDP presidential ticket.
Atiku added that when he got the ticket again in 2019 to run, he took another Obi coincidentally.
“So, there is absolutely no reason they should say that there is a deliberate attempt to exclude the South-East in political participation or power sharing.”
“So I thought I should disabuse your mind and of course, as an enlightened political class, I don’t think there’s any deliberate policy to exclude anybody in this country,” he said.