NEF member: Atiku is not close to the north — we don’t know him

Seidu Baba, a member of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), says the body is yet to have a presidential candidate it is supporting in the forthcoming elections.

Speaking with journalists at an event to mark NEF’s 10th year anniversary, Baba debunked insinuations that Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is the forum’s candidate.

The NEF member alleged that Abubakar has not been fair to the north and has embarked on a “voyage of political desperation”.

“Atiku has not been seen as somebody who is close to the north because he has not been fair to us, he is somebody having his base outside the north,” he said.

“In 1999 during a book launch at Arewa House in Kaduna, Sa’adu Zungur written by Prof. M.A. Yakubu, the current Chairman of INEC, Atiku as the vice-president of Nigeria was supposed to be the most senior political office holder from the north in the federal government as at that time but he at the occasion condemned all northerners leaders and elders.

“In his speech, he told his bewildered audience that the northern leaders and elders were the people who failed the north and the nation. He said they were the ones that had caused the problems. That was the beginning of his problems in the north.”

Baba said the move to make NEF adopt Abubakar shows “how desperate he is”.

“Many people believe even though the governor of Kaduna state, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, was condemning Northern elders, it is believed, his real target was Atiku Abubakar,” he said.

“There is no way that Atiku can be a Northern candidate because he does not know them and we do not know him.”