Saraki Blasts APC: “Saying That ‘Atiku Travel to the United States as My Aide is Ridiculous”.

Senate President Bukola Saraki has a problem with anyone who thinks presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, landed in the United States on Thursday, January 17, 2019, only because he was attached to Saraki’s travelling party as a legislative aide.

Atiku, who hasn’t been to the U.S in 13 years, has been named in a couple of corruption cases perpetrated on American soil, amid insinuations that he was going to be arrested should he set foot on U.S territory.

However, Atiku made a show of his latest U.S trip with plenty of pictures sent back home for effect; and Saraki admitted on Kakaaki, an AIT breakfast program, that the trip was put together because the governing APC and its band of supporters had made his non-entry to the U.S into a vicious campaign propaganda.

“It was important to settle the matter and put it behind us”, Saraki said, while noting that Atiku’s inability to travel to the U.S in the past had become a major talking point in the current election season.

Atiku returned to Nigeria ahead of a debate he shunned, on Saturday, January 19, 2019. “People were saying how can someone be running for the office of president of Nigeria and not be able to travel to America?”, Saraki added.

Asked to address rumours that Atiku could not have travelled with his own visa and had to attach himself to Saraki’s as a legislative aide, the senate president blared: “To say he travelled as my aide is ridiculous. He applied for his visa. He got his visa and went on his own merit”.

Saraki heads the PDP campaign council set up to elect Atiku president next month. Coming to America

Some pundits had posited that Atiku was granted special waiver (something called waiver of inadmissibility) to step on U.S soil in his capacity as presidential candidate of one of the two major Nigerian political parties.

Applying for a waiver of inadmissibility can be a lengthy process that can take a year to complete and it costs the applicant decent money.

Atiku is President Muhammadu Buhari’s major challenger ahead of the February 16 presidential vote. Over 70 other candidates are vying for the top job in Africa’s largest economy, including Obiageli Ezekwesili of the ACPN, Fela Durotoye of the ANN, Kingsley Moghalu of the YPP and Omoyele Sowore of AAC.

Atiku considers the 2019 presidential election a referendum on an incumbent who promised to fix the economy, stave off attacks from rampaging terrorists and mend crumbling infrastructure before the 2015 general elections.