Lai Mohammed, Information Minister, has told Atiku Abubakar, the 2019 presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), not to see his lost at the poll as the end of the world.
Mr Abubakar, a former vice president popularly known as Atiku lost his long-desired ambition of clinching the highest office in the land to President Muhammadu Buhari who trounced the PDP candidate to actualize his second term in office.
Mr Buhari who ran the race on the platform of the All Progressive Congress (APC) is expected to commence his second term in May.
Since he lost the February 23 election, Atiku has been exploring all avenues at his disposal to unseat the president.
Although he has gone to the election tribunal, praying to be declared winner of the presidential race, he is recently rumored to have employed the services of a lobbyists who has been negotiating to have the western world recognise him as winner of the election.
Atiku has denied he engineered the latest development but Mr Mohammed is not buying into the claim. The minister while consoling the loser warned the former vice president not to heat up the polity.
“As you must have noticed in recent times, posters bearing the picture of former vice-president and the presidential candidate of the PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, with the inscription: ‘THE PUKKA, H.E. ATIKU ABUBAKAR, THE REAL AND THE RIGHT’, have surfaced across major streets in Abuja,” the minister said at a press conference in Abuja on Thursday.
“The appearance of these posters coincide with the media report that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has hired a US lobbying firm to convince the United States not to recognise the re-election of President Buhari until the Supreme Court has ruled on the suit by the PDP presidential candidate.
“The posters and the hiring of US lobbyists, the latest of such by the PDP candidate, have triggered questions about what Alhaji Abubakar is up to. Is he starting a fresh campaign after the elections have been won and lost?
“Has he rescinded his decision to challenge the results of the presidential election in court, perhaps after realizing that the results he claimed to have obtained from the INEC back server are cooked? Is he now going for self-help? What really is Atiku’s motive?
“Yes, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has lost an election. But he will not be the first or the last person to lose an election, and he should realize that losing an election is not the end of the world. He has challenged the result of the election in court.
“That’s just as well. However, he should not give the impression that he does not have confidence in the judicial process, which is what resorting to self-help implies. He should stop overheating the polity and quit trying to instigate a political crisis in Nigeria.
“No citizen, no matter how highly placed, is above the laws of the land. Enough is enough!” Lai added.