Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has emerged as the presidential flagbearer of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), having won the party primary held nationwide.
Prompt News Online reports that Atiku polled 1,846,370 votes to beat his closest rival, former Rivers State governor Rotimi Amaechi, who polled 504,117 votes, while businessman Mohammed Hayatu-Deen got 177,120 votes.
In his acceptance speech, Atiku commended the party for demonstrating that democracy is alive in the ADC, vowing to resist any attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of the party.
His words, “We demonstrated that while democracy is being strangled and squashed by the ruling party and its oppressive and anti-democratic government, democracy is alive and well in the African Democratic Congress.
“Great care was taken to ensure that due diligence was done in the process of forming this coalition. Yet the government and the INEC continue to undermine it, even trying to deregister it.
“Let me warn that any further attempt to interfere in the affairs of the party by the Presidency, INEC and judiciary will be fiercely resisted. Enough is enough.”
Atiku called on fellow contestants to join hands with him to win the general election, saying it is not time for celebration yet.
“I must state at this juncture that this is not the time to celebrate. No one was defeated because we are one party and we all need to recognise the fierce urgency of the moment.
“Therefore, we have to unite, as we pledged before this process, to work to pull our country and our people out of the destructive grip of a corrupt, incompetent and polarising APC government,” he said.
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