The presidency on Sunday night described as irrelevant the reported endorsement of the Peoples Democratic Party presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, in the February 16 general elections by some socio-cultural groups in the country.
Five socio-cultural groups including the Northern Elders’ Forum, Afenifere, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the Pan Niger Delta Forum and Middle Belt Forum had on Sunday endorsed PDP presidential candidate for the forthcoming presidential candidate.
But, the presidential spokesman, Malam Garba Shehu, in a statement in Abuja, dismissed the position of the groups, saying that the PDP was only hiding under the cloud of ethnicity to avoid its inevitable defeat.
According to him, the current scenario resembles efforts to stop Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 by the same characters which failed and it will equally fail this time around.
The statement read in part: “The Peoples Democratic Party is hiding in the bunker of ethnicity to avoid their inevitable defeat but that won’t change anything.
“The current scenario resembles efforts to stop Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 by the same characters. It is an effort to repeat the old experiment that failed in 2015.
“They failed to stop him from coming to power in 2015 and they will fail yet again on February 16.
“If all these groups are ganging up against one person, that is President Buhari, it tells you who the formidable candidate in the election is.
“This gang up they forged, one more time will change nothing. It is for the people to decide,’’ Shehu
The official spokesperson for the All Progressives Congress, presidential campaign Council, Mr Festus Keyamo, had also frowned at the endorsement of the PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar by the groups.
Keyamo said, “those endorsing Atiku are angry because President Buhari has chosen to relate with the masses directly and not through them, as middlemen’’.