By Adeleye Kunle
Atiku Abubakar, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, has stated that his relationship with Bola Tinubu soured in 2007 after the former governor demanded that he field a Muslim-Muslim ticket in that year’s presidential election.
Atiku, the presidential candidate of the now-defunct opposition Action Congress, ran against then-ruling PDP President Umar Yar’Adua. Yar’Adua was elected, but died in office three years later in May 2010.
During an interview with Track News, Atiku stated that he became politically estranged from Tinubu after he nominated Ben Obi, a Christian from southern Nigeria, as his vice-presidential candidate in the 2007 election.
“He insisted on running with me, and I didn’t think it was right to have a Muslim-Muslim ticket,” he explained.
“That was the turning point in my relationship with him.”
Atiku, Tinubu, and other political heavyweights founded the Action Congress.
However, by the 2011 election, Abubakar had returned to the PDP, and Tinubu had rebranded the party as the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).
The ACN was one of five political parties that merged to form the now-ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
This article first appeared on Track News.
