My Political Ties With Tinubu Crashed In 2007 Over Muslim-Muslim Ticket – Atiku Reveals

Category: Nigeria News

Atiku Abubakar has said his political ties with Bola Tinubu crashed in 2007 after the former Lagos governor demanded fielding a Muslim-Muslim ticket in that year’s presidential election.

Mr Abubakar stood as the presidential candidate of the now-defunct opposition Action Congress against Umar Yar’Adua of the then-ruling Peoples Democratic Party. Mr Yar’Adua won the election, but died in office three years later in May 2010.

Mr Abubakar, the PDP’s presidential candidate for next year’s election, said he became politically-estranged with Mr Tinubu after he presented 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 believe it was right to have a Muslim-Muslim ticket,” Mr Abubakar said in an interview with Arise Television. “That was the point of my fundamental departure with him.”

The Action Congress was formed by Mr Abubakar, Mr Tinubu and other political heavyweights as Mr Abubakar, Nigeria’s vice-president at the time, was locked in a political battle with President Olusegun Obasanjo.

The alliance crashed by the 2011 election after Mr Abubakar returned to the PDP, and Mr Tinubu rebranded the party as Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).

The ACN was amongst the five political blocks that became the now-ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).