Tinubu, Atiku meet at Abuja airport after verbal attacks

Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) rival, Atiku Abubakar, on Monday met at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja.

According to an APC official, Dada Olusegun, Tinubu was at the airport on his way to Jos ahead of the APC presidential campaign flag-off.

It was a brief meeting and the two top politicians smiled as they exchanged pleasantries.
Those at the airport during the chance meeting are Senator Abdullahi Adamu, national chairman of the ruling party, and Mohammed Hayatudeen, a PDP presidential aspirant who lost his party’s ticket to Atiku.

This came less than 24 hours after the opposition party demanded Tinubu’s withdrawal from the 2023 race.

The PDP had said Tinubu was ineligible to contest “because of credibility questions hanging on his personality which are inimical to requirements provided in Nigeria’s Constitution for anyone willing to contest for the presidency.”
National Publicity Secretary of PDP, Debo Ologunagba, said this while interacting with journalists in Abuja on Sunday.
Atiku and Tinubu have a longstanding relationship.

The Tinubu camp also accused the PDP of sponsoring fake news against him, saying it would not help the opposition party to win the 2023 poll.
Atiku, who fell out with former President Olusegun Obasanjo in the bid to succeed him, later clinched the presidential ticket of Action Congress (AC), a party that Tinubu was instrumental to its formation after the political “Tsunami” that hit Alliance for Democracy (AD) governors who were elected in 1999.
However, Atiku came a distant third in the election, which was won by the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, President Muhammadu Buhari of the then All Nigerians Peoples Party (ANPP) came second.