Chille Igbawua, a chieftain of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), has denied claims that the party will give former Vice President Atiku Abubakar preference over other presidential aspirants who defected to the party, news.ng reports.
Igbawua made this known during an interview on Channels Television on Monday morning.
This comes barely 24 hours after Peter Obi, a former presidential candidate, announced his exit from the party to join the National Democratic Congress (NDC), alongside Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, leader of the Kwankwasiyya movement. Both were welcomed at the NDC office in Abuja on Sunday evening.
You may recall that Obi, in a statement on Sunday, said he left the ADC due to the crisis in the party caused by the same people who forced him out of the Labour Party.
Meanwhile, Igbawua, weighing in on the matter, stressed that whoever emerges as the party’s presidential candidate will go through a transparent process.
He said, “I’m sufficiently an insider enough to know if discussions were held who was deciding who was going to emerge. And I say that is the certainty about who emerges is that it would be through a transparent and open process.
While Atiku has publicly made it clear that the 2027 presidential election will be his last contest, the ADC chieftain further emphasised that the party will not be a “special purpose vehicle” for the former Vice President to achieve his political aspirations.
“So, they have not, you know, saying there’s anything that caused them, and we have sufficiently over the time denied this issue that the ADC is a special purpose vehicle for Atiku Abubakar.
“That certainly is untrue because nobody who has come into the ADC has been given, you know, preference over him. And to confirm that, Atiku Abubakar himself has said that he will contest this as his last attempt at the presidency. And that should somebody else win, that he’s very willing to support such a person.”
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