What Atiku’s candidature means for APC — Ojo

Many people in the APC expected the PDP convention in Port Harcourt to end in crisis, but the reverse was the case, what do you make of this?

I was not really envisaging crisis at the end of it all because the PDP has existed for about 20 years now, so I was expecting them to do things maturely; which they did. I want to congratulate President Muhammadu Buhari because with the outcome of the PDP convention, victory is clear for him in 2019. My fear initially was Gov. Aminu Waziri Tambuwal. I felt Tambuwal would have been better and would have been more acceptable to Nigerians. Definitely I would have done anti-party if Tambuwal emerged as the presidential candidate of the PDP because he is a youth, a lawyer, has experience of the National Assembly, was a minority leader, a speaker and now governor and I don’t think he is owing 10 kobo in Sokoto State. But Atiku emerged. I don’t want to talk about it much, but I want to believe he has a lot of money to fight his cause.

I respect PDP because of the maturity they displayed and I think that is a symbol of honour to Nigeria. The credit is not only for the PDP alone; it goes to Nigeria as a whole. They displayed high level of maturity in a sophisticated democratic system; so I congratulate them on that.

Why do you think Tambuwal failed to emerge as PDP candidate?

I want to believe that before that time - I am not in the PDP, but I have a lot of friends in the PDP - Tambuwal was the anointed candidate to win it, but because of the overzealousness of a particular person that was supporting him, the calculation changed. People began to think about another aspirant. Tambuwal would have emerged, and at this point, I still give Kudos to him because he still beat Saraki, Kwankwaso, Makarfi, Bafarawa and others. All these are the heavyweights; they are bigger, more popular than Tambuwal in politics, but he floored them. If Tambuwal had emerged, I would have been afraid if Buhari can defeat him.

Now that the PDP has demonstrated high level of maturity in the choice of its presidential candidate, will you say the game is up for the APC in 2019?

The game is not up for the APC. There are so many people that are not happy with the candidature of Atiku in PDP, but it is left for them to decamp to APC. I want to tell you today that so many sitting governors of the PDP are going to do protest vote; they will win in their respective states but they will