The All Progressives Congress has welcomed the defection of Abubakar Atiku Abubakar, son of former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, to the ruling party, describing the move as an endorsement of President Bola Tinubu and the APC.
In a statement on Friday, the Lagos State spokesperson of the party, Seye Oladejo, said the defection was “a generational rebuke of recycled politics, expired ambitions, and the illusion of leadership without conviction,” adding that it was “an emphatic vote of confidence in the APC’s record of governance and in the Renewed Hope Agenda being diligently implemented under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.”
Abubakar Atiku Abubakar defected from the Peoples Democratic Party to the APC on Thursday and declared support for Tinubu’s second-term bid, a decision his father later described as neither “unusual nor alarming.”
However, the APC said the move reflected negatively on the former vice-president’s suitability to lead the country, arguing that it exposed a deeper crisis of credibility.
“This singular act has said more than a thousand press conferences ever could. When a man’s own son deserts his political judgment, repudiates his choices, and embraces an alternative path, Nigerians are entitled to ask: what deeper indictment of credibility is required?” the party said, adding, “If those closest to you are unconvinced by your political convictions, how do you expect an entire nation to suspend disbelief?”
The party further criticised Atiku’s political trajectory, saying, “From PDP to AC, back to PDP, and now to the ADC, his politics has been nothing more than a nomadic ambition in search of a party,” and concluded that “when credibility collapses at home, it cannot be rehabilitated in the marketplace of national politics.”