‘Morbid joke’ — Kogi APC campaign hits Atiku over promise to ‘revive’ Ajaokuta steel plant

The campaign council of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kogi state has described the promise by Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to “revive” the Ajaokuta steel plant as a “morbid” joke.

On January 14, during the PDP campaign rally in Kogi, Abubakar said if elected president, the issues over the Ajaokuta steel company will “be a thing of the past”.

Reacting to the development in a statement, Kingsley Fanwo, Kogi commissioner for information who doubles as the director of media and publicity of the Kogi APC campaign council, said the promise is an insult to the “sensibilities of Kogi people”.

He said President Muhammadu Buhari has taken a “gigantic step” by getting the company ready for a concessioning, adding that Bola Tinubu, the presidential candidate of APC, will “see the process through.”

“The pledge of Atiku to revive the Ajaokuta steel company can only be classified as a morbid joke that he must have made to insult the sensibilities of Kogi State and her people,” the statement reads.

“We are familiar with how the privatisation council under his supervision sold national assets to his friends and cronies. Some of the scandals around such are still in courts around the world to date. President Muhammadu Buhari has taken a bold step on the gigantic project and we trust the president in waiting, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu to see the process through.”

Fanwo also dismissed the claim by the Atiku campaign organisation that the party will record “sweeping victory” in Kogi state.

“The PDP flagbearer also assured the lecture theatre crowd culled for him from 7 states that he would win the 2023 presidential polls. This is the illusion of the decade already, as he will be resoundingly defeated by the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress,” Fanwo said.

“It is even looking as if his boy, who admitted publicly that Atiku was his master who trained and settled him, might take more voter share than him in this race. Anyway, he is used to losing in politics and he will lose again on 25th February.”

Meanwhile, during the PDP rally in Kogi, Dino Melaye, the spokesperson of the presidential campaign council, said “146,318 members of the APC in Kogi” have joined the PDP.

Melaye added that Simon Achuba, a former deputy governor of Kogi, and Umar Ahmed Imam, former speaker of the state’s house of assembly, are among the defectors. 

Speaking on the defection, Fanwo said those who left APC are inconsequential in the politics of Kogi.

“PDP rolled out expired individuals who had been expunged from the ranks of the APC for their unsavoury deeds and characters and proceeded to canonise them,” he said.