Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Presidential Candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), and former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) rival, met briefly at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja on Monday.
The top politicians smiled at each other as they exchanged pleasantries under the watchful eyes of their party chieftains.
Senator Abdullahi Adamu, National Chairman of the ruling party, and Mohammed Hayatudeen, a PDP Presidential aspirant who lost his party’s ticket to Atiku, were at the airport at the time of the meeting, which held less than 24 hours after the opposition party demanded Tinubu’s withdrawal from the 2023 race.
The PDP had said Tinubu was ineligible to contest “because of credibility questions hanging on his personality which are inimical to requirements provided in Nigeria’s Constitution for anyone willing to contest for the presidency.”
National Publicity Secretary of PDP, Hon. Debo Ologunagba, said this while interacting with journalists in Abuja on Sunday.
Atiku and Tinubu have a longstanding relationship.
Atiku, who fell out with former President Olusegun Obasanjo in the bid to succeed him, later clinched the presidential ticket of Action Congress (AC), a party that Tinubu was instrumental to its formation after the political “Tsunami” that hit Alliance for Democracy (AD) governors who were elected in 1999.
However, Atiku came a distant third in the election, which was won by the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, President Muhammadu Buhari of the then All Nigerians Peoples Party (ANPP) came second.
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