The All Progressives Congress (APC) says the claim by Atiku Abubakar, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate in the 2023 elections that he did not lose the election but was stolen, was most comical.

Felix Morka, the party’s national publicity secretary, said this in a statement on Tuesday in Abuja while reacting to comments made by Mr Abubakar on the election’s outcome.

Mr Abubakar, also a former vice president, on his X handle, stated that he did not lose the 2023 presidential election, claiming the election was stolen from him.

Mr Morka, in his reaction, described Mr Abubakar as Africa’s most infamous presidential election loser, noting that since serving as vice president, he had lost election to every elected president.

“Six times in the last 17 years, Nigerians have declared their verdict of untrust and lack of sportsmanship on Abubakar’s presidential candidacy and roundly rejected him at the polls.

“Abubakar’s long record of electoral defeat was serially certified by Nigeria’s highest courts, sealing his rejection by the electorate with judicial and constitutional finality.

“However, a clearly unabashed Abubakar continues to lay a bogus claim that he did not lose the 2023 presidential election. That is beyond comical,” the APC spokesman said.

He said this was so as the former vice president probably believed that he was cheated out of all previous five presidential elections that he also lost.

Mr Morka added that Mr Abubakar’s inability to accept the reality of his rejection cuts an ominous portrait of extreme and disturbing political desperation.

He added that Nigeria’s intelligent and discerning electorate would not act against their best interest by electing Mr Abubakar into office.

According to Mr Morka, the former vice president is a central and recurrent player in some of the country’s most vile roll call of corruption scandals perpetrated by the PDP administrations.

“He was the vice president in the government that created crooked and viscerally corrupt petrol subsidy hydra-headed dragon that has crippled our country’s economy,

“And laid the foundation for the endemic corruption and inefficiency that have undermined our power sector through the years.

“His desperation to be president can only be understood in the context of his determination to complete the full subversion of Nigeria’s economic life from where he left off as vice president.

“Nigerians will not entrust their country to someone who puts his selfish interest and the interest of his cronies over and above the national interest,” Mr Morka said.

He added that having demystified himself with his recent release of what he would have done differently if he was the president showed that he had nothing to offer Nigerians.

Mr Morka added that from Mr Abubakar’s release, it was obvious that all he would have offered was his stale, tired, tested and failed economic ideas that were of polar relevance to the current existential economic challenges facing the country.

He added that the former vice president had a chance to execute whatever economic ideas he may have ever had but failed to do so.

Mr Morka further added that as vice president, Mr Abubakar also failed to get his party, the PDP, to do so in all of its 16 years of government.

“Abubakar thinks himself capable of fixing Nigeria but cannot fix the rot and hopeless dysfunction in his PDP,” the APC spokesman said.

He urged Nigerians to be steadfast in support of the APC administration of President Bola Tinubu and valiant efforts to restore vitality to our economy for the good of all Nigerians.

(NAN)