The camp of former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has accused former interim National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Bisi Akande of suffering from selective Amnesia over his allegation that the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu funded the Presidential election of Mr Atiku Abubakar in the 2007 presidential elections.
In his autobiography, “My Participations”, Akande, who was the National Chairman of the Action Congress (AC) at the time Atiku contested the Presidential poll on the platform of the party in 2007, said Tinubu funded the party.
Akande wrote, “Anytime we said we needed money, Atiku would say ‘Bola, please help us’. Bola was the only one spending the money among us. The rest of us were poor. Tinubu also put all his energy and resources into the formation of the AC.”
However in an interview on Sunday, the spokesman of Atiku, Paul Ibe said Akande was being economic with the truth concealing the clear and documented fact that both of them at the time belonged to the same political camp.
Ibe said, “As at that time, Tinubu and Atiku were of the same stock, political family. So what’s the story there?”
“If they were not members of the AC then, like Asiwaju Tinubu and other stakeholders in the AC, who was going to fund the campaign? It was a Presidential election that was run with Atiku Abubakar as a candidate. It is not about him as an individual. Campaigns are funded. Were you going to expect another party to fund it or other stakeholders from another party to fund it?
“It has to be funded by members of that party and the last time I checked from history, Asiwaju Tinubu was a major stakeholder of that party.
“For Baba Bisi Akande to single out Tinubu as somebody who contributed resources is like a mischief, it’s like selective amnesia. Apart from Atiku as a major funder, there were also other individuals who contributed to the funding of that Presidential campaign.
According to Ibe, Atiku also invested heavily in the party and that Akande has chosen to be a lap dog in Tinubu’s politcal chess game.
Both Akande and Tinubu were elected governors on the platform of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) in 1999 but while Akande and other AD governors lost reelection in 2003, only Tinubu successfully resisted PDP electoral onslaught.
For the 2007 general elections, Atiku, who was interested in succeeding Obasanjo, defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to Action Congress (ACN) after he fell out with his principal..
He had clinched the AC presidential ticket easily but he suffered a major setback after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) disqualified him from the race.
Together with his allies in AC, Atiku fought all the way to the Supreme Court, which cleared him to run in the election.
Mr Akande was the National Chairman of the Action Congress (AC) at the time Atiku contested the Presidential poll on the platform of the party in 2007.
Currently both Atiku and Tinubu are at opposite sides of the political aisle, with Tinubu in APC and Atiku in PDP and both of them are reportedly gunning for the 2023 presidency on their respective platforms.
