PDP dismisses Fitch Ratings report predicting that Tinubu will win next year's elections

FORMER vice president Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has dismissed as speculative a report by Fitch Ratings predicting that the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate Asiwaju Bola Tinubu would win next year's presidential elections.

In February next year, Nigeria goes to the polls to elect a new president, with the ruling APC selecting former Lagos State governor Asiwaju Tinubu as its candidate and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) going for former vice president Alhaji Abubakar. Former Anambra State governor Peter Obi and ex-Kano State governor Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso are the candidates of the Labour Party and New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) respectively.

A recent Fitch Ratings Poll  had predicted that Asiwaju Tinubu would win the elections but the Atiku/Okowa Presidential Campaign Organisation has dismissed the prediction as a speculative report. PDP spokesman Kola Ologbondiyan, described the Fitch report as merely contrived, imaginary and completely illusory.

Mr Ologbondiyan added: “It is a trivial opinion of ignorant interlopers which does not conform with any empirical or substantiated indicators regarding the direction of the 2023 presidential election in Nigeria. While we do not want to conclude on the opinion already widely held in the public space that the report was procured or not emanating officially from Fitch, especially given the desperation and devious antecedents of the Tinubu Campaign Organisation and the APC, it is however important to state that these conjectures are direct opposite of the reality on ground.

“It is important to note that the APC presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has no electoral fighting chance before the PDP presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar and his running mate Ifeanyi Okowa. Contrary to the report being peddled by the APC, Asiwaju Tinubu is battling with trust issues, stamina concerns, massive open rejection by majority of voters across the country, mass exodus from his APC into PDP due to the abysmal failures of his party in addition to his self-confessed selfish motives for being in the presidential race."

He added that Asiwaju Tinubu has no strong, organic and reliable political base anywhere in the country and cannot get the required 25% in a majority of the states of the federation. According to Mr Ologbondiyan, hordes of Nigerians across northern Nigeria who voted for President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 and 2019, are now crossing over to the PDP to support Atiku Abubakar in the 2023 elections.

Mr Ologbondiyan added: “In the south, Asiwaju Tinubu has no solid base in the south-south and southeast where he has been roundly rejected. Even in the southwest, the former Lagos State governor has been demystified as evidenced in his party’s devastating loss in the last governorship election in Osun State, a state considered to be his ancestry home.

“Asiwaju Tinubu has been booed in states of the southwest and he has lost his political allies, cultural institutions and foot soldiers in Lagos State and other parts of the southwest because of his selfish posturing and trust issues. Moreover, the APC presidential candidate has not demonstrated the desired capacity, experience, stamina as well as selfless disposition to lead a nation like Nigeria.