Baba-Ahmed to Atiku: Stop Contesting for President

Chuks Okocha in Abuja

The 2023 vice presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Datti Baba-Ahmed, has asked former vice president Atiku Abubakar to stop contesting for president, saying Atiku had already started contesting to become Nigeria’s President while he served as a member of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).

He called on the former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate to allow the younger generation to take over the political space and seek ideas to solve the country’s problems.Baba-Ahmed said that the likes of Atiku, with their expensive style of politics, are discouraging younger politicians with better ideas.Speaking in an interview in Abuja, Baba-Ahmed said, “When I was doing my NYSC, Baba Atiku was an aspirant and in 2018, we contested primaries together. In 2023 we contested again, I was a vice president elsewhere when his vice president had left him. For God’s sake in 2027 again?

“There is the need for a new generation of Nigerian leaders and they do exist. As I said, a whole new generation is waiting for a new leader to lead them to a new party. There are good Nigerians.

“There are people capable of solving Nigerian problems, but they are discouraged by the expensive, difficult, treacherous system full of godfathers and bad promises to make. But there are good Nigerians who are looking for that leader to lead them to fix Nigeria, Nigeria’s problems.”

Atiku has left the PDP and joined the African Democratic Congress (ADC), a platform he would be contesting in the 2027 presidential election.

The ADC also has the likes of Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party in 2023 and Chibuike Amaechi, a former Governor of Rivers State.