..Says APC has made incursions into South-East
The Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo (SAN), has declared that the political structures that propelled former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and Labour Party’s Peter Obi in the 2023 presidential election have collapsed, making their prospects for 2027 untenable.
Speaking in a recent interview on Channels TV, Keyamo analysed the political fortunes of both opposition flag bearers for the 2027 presidential election, arguing that the factors that delivered their votes in the last election are no longer in place.
On Atiku Abubakar, the Minister said the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate has lost the governors who constituted the backbone of his 2023 campaign.
“Atiku, the structure upon which he ran, which is the PDP, has disappeared. He left the PDP with no governor. All the governors that gave him that 6.7, that took him to second, that gave him 6.7 million votes. All those governors, where are they? Because the governors are the structure of the party.
The governors are all unable to achieve what you need. Do you realise that? All the governors that fought for Atiku, all, except Bala Mohammed. So only Bala Mohammed is even left. He’s not in the party with him. Okay. So there’s no governor, nobody with him. All those people are with the president.”
On Peter Obi, Keyamo argued that the Labour Party candidate’s 2023 performance was driven by religious and ethnic factors that have since dissipated.
“Peter Obi ran, whether you like it or not, on the platform of ‘Yes Daddy,’ which is Christian sentiment and the Igbo sentiment. There’s no group like Obedient. It’s just some noisemakers on TikTok and social media. They are claiming the credit of what the Christians did for them in 2023 and the Igbo votes. There is no political group like Obedient.”
He added: “Those factors of whom shall we run in 2023, they’re all gone now. Because of the fear of Christianity, because they were, of all the middle candidates, he was the only Christian candidate.
So you had Atiku, you had Kwankwaso, you had what was Tinubu did then. All Muslims. So he was the only Christian. Because of the fear, the normal fear of marginalisation and all that. If anybody is talking about Muslim-Muslim ticket today, it’s only the press just trying to play it up. In the minds of Nigerians, it has disappeared. Because that fear no longer exists.”
Keyamo dismissed the prospects of any opposition alliance in 2027, describing the election as a foregone conclusion.
“Do you need a soothsayer to tell you that 2027 is a coronation? It’s not an election. It’s a coronation”, he said.
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