The presidential as­piration of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar received a boost last Satur­day as stakeholders of the All Progressives Peoples Congress (APC) from the North-East converged on Zaranda Hotel, Bauchi and unanimously endorsed him to run on the platform of the party.


The stakeholders drawn from all the six states in the region resolved that the North-East must produce the next presidential candidate of the APC and appealed to other stakeholders in the party from other zones to support Atiku’s emergence as the party’s can­didate for the 2015 presidential election.
Speaking during the en­dorsement meeting, the Direc­tor General of Atiku Support Group (ASG), Alhaji Abdul­razak Nadas, commended the party’s stakeholders from the North-East for the confidence reposed in the former vice president, saying the group was the first organisation to come out to ask Atiku to run for president
“Atiku is an experienced politician, businessman and philanthropist who knows Ni­geria very well. He knows our problem, he fought against third term otherwise we won’t be here today. Nigeria needs him. We need the support of all stakeholders to actualise it,” he said.
A chieftain of the party, Abdulrahman Jimeta, said the gathering was not just to endorse Atiku but also to de­cide on democracy and save the country from collapse. He stressed that the North-East was the most backward, iso­lated and most exploited of all the six regions in the country.
“It is on record that we fought for independence and we produced great people like Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Ribadu, Kassim Ibrahim and many others, yet today we are the most backward. The World Bank classified us as the poor­est; that is why we gathered here today to decide on our fu­ture,” he said.
According to him, nobody would save the people of the re­gion from the problem of insur­gency, underdevelopment and poverty except one of theirs.
“We are going to support Abubakar Atiku, the Turakin Adamawa, to clinch the APC ticket and we will take our commitment to the other zones as a matter of urgency, not a choice, except if we want to continue to be exploited..”
Other leaders and stakehold­ers from Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Taraba and Yobe said Atiku remained their choice because he was a dogged fighter who could match the Peoples Democratic Party at the polls.
Chairman on the occasion, Alhaji Barau Ningi, who de­scribed Atiku as a great man, political giant, business guru and administrator par excel­lence, lamented that the coun­try was dogged by many social ills, saying only Atiku could salvage it.