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2019 election: Atiku raises alarm over plot to arrest key associates

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2 years ago

July 4, 2022

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Presidential candidate of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar, yesterday has raised the alarm over an alleged plot to arrest some of his key associates in the run-up to the election.

Atiku accused an unnamed governor from North-West and a prominent minister in the current administration of working in cahoots with All Progressives Congress, APC, to achieve the plot.

However, Muhammadu Buhari Campaign immediately dismissed the assertion and warned that opposition was not a licence to commit offence.

Spokesman of the Buhari Campaign, Mr. Festus Keyamo, said: “If they have done nothing, they have nothing to fear, but the fact that you are in the opposition is not a licence for you to commit illegality. If they do anything illegal in the days to the election, they will be arrested.”

But in a statement issued in Abuja, yesterday, by Atiku’s Special Assistant on Public Communication, Mr. Phrank Shaibu, the PDP presidential candidate said his close political associates were being targeted for arrest by APC-led Federal Government, which is hell bent on derailing the electoral process.

He said: ‘’The architects of this plot believe that unless the APC destabilises the main opposition party and gets rid of the key associates of the PDP presidential candidate, President Buhari’s plan to clinch a second term in office will be in jeopardy, especially as they are afraid, for obvious reasons that the president has become unpopular and won’t be re-elected at the poll.

‘’The first step in this desperate plot is to arrest some of our associates using the EFCC with others soon to follow, based on a list that has been drawn up by the cabal,” the statement said.