Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has said that his relationship with his All Progressives Congress, APC, counterpart, took a turn for the worse in 2007 after Bola Tinubu demanded he fields a Muslim-Muslim ticket in the presidential election of that year.
Atiku, who was the presidential candidate of the now-defunct opposition Action Congress, AC, contested against Umar Yar’Adua of the then-ruling PDP. Yar’Adua won the election, but died in office three years in May 2010.
Atiku, speaking on the past event during an interview with Arise Television, said that he became politically estranged with Tinubu after he presented Ben Obi, a Christian from southern Nigeria, as his vice-presidential candidate in the 2007 election.
He said: “He insisted on running with me and I didn’t believe it was right to have a Muslim-Muslim ticket.
“That was the point of my fundamental departure with him.”
The Action Congress was established by Atiku, Tinubu and other political heavy weights.
However, the alliance crashed by the 2011 election after Abubakar returned to the PDP, and Tinubu rebranded the party as Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN.
The ACN was amongst the five political blocks that became the now-ruling APC.
