el-Rufai: Atiku is a serial contestant, No APC governor will follow him; party yet to receive resignation letter from ex-VP

Hours after dumping the All Progressives Congress (APC), condemnation came the way of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar on Friday.
To Governor Nasir el-Rufai, even if Atiku gets the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential ticket for the 2019 election, he will never defeat President Muhammadu Buhari.
Buhari has not declared his interest to seek re-election.
el-Rufai, who spoke to State House correspondents after observing Friday Muslim prayers at the Villa Mosque with Buhari, said “this is Buhari’s time and no APC governor will defect from the party on account of Atiku Abubakar’s resignation from the APC. I am sure you know that Governor of Abubakar’s home state of Adamawa, Jubrila Bindow, has already endorsed Buhari for 2019.
“We knew he was planning to leave APC in December. Now that he has moved earlier, the earlier, the better.
“I have heard about what the former Vice President said about leaving the APC. We knew he was going to leave in December but he has left in November which is good because the earlier he leaves for where he belongs, the better.
“He has changed political parties a few times, there is nothing surprising. That is what he has done a few times.
“No one has driven him out of the party. The APC is an equal opportunity platform for everyone. He has in his statement of leaving the party made reference to the memo I wrote to Mr. President in September 2016, where I was calling on the President to reach out to party leaders that feel aggrieved and I mentioned him, the Asiwaju and many others.
“The others are still in the APC because they believe in the direction of the party, they believe we have come to save the country from a very bad situation. But the former Vice President is always looking for an opportunity to contest. He is a serial contestant and we wish him luck.”
On threat that some party members loyal to Atiku may leave APC, el-Rufai stated: “I don’t know about the loyalists in the APC that will go with him but I want to assure you that there is no one governor in the APC that is going to go with former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.
“The only governor that he would think will go with him, the governor of Adamawa State has already endorsed President Buhari for the 2019 elections. And there are many governors, I will not mention the number but a majority of the APC governors have already taken the position that the president should run for a second term in office.
“And we are grateful to the Almighty God that the question marks about his health have been put to rest, he is getting better every day and we are confident that the way to preserve our party and preserve and advance the interest of Nigeria is for Mr. President to run for a second term.
“I’m curious to see which APC governor will go with Atiku. As for party loyalists, it depends on what you define as loyalists. We will wait and see how that evolves.
“But as a governor, I want to assure you that not one governor is going to leave the party to go with the former Vice President. That I am sure of. I can speak authoritatively about it because I’m in touch with my colleagues.”
Asked whether Abubakar will not be a threat to Buhari’s re-election, the Kaduna governor declared: “He has never been and will never be a threat to President Buhari. Let me say this very clearly, and I have said this to the former Vice President in 2014 in Dubai when we met because before joining the APC he sent for me. He told me of his intentions and I welcomed it because politics is a game of addition, not subtraction. So, the more you have, the merrier.
“However, I told him not to run for the presidency because I believe very strongly this is Buhari’s era. As long as President Muhammadu Buhari is in politics, I do not see any Nigerian from the Northern part of the country that will be able to match him in popularity.
“The people of the 19 northern states and the majority of Nigeria have decided because of the President’s past history of Integrity and good governance they are committed to him.
“Anyone standing up to challenge him is wasting his time. God has decreed that this is Buhari’s time and we are waiting for the PDP to give Atiku Abubakar the ticket and we will face him on the field but I have no doubt that I will not lose any sleep about it.”
Meanwhile, the APC said that it was yet to receive a letter of resignation from Atiku.
The party’s National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, made this known while reacting to the development on Friday in Abuja.
Abdullahi said that APC leadership had not seen any formal notification on the purported resignation, adding however, that based on what “we have seen in the social media, we can say that it is surprising’’.
“For us politics is all about interest; so, if the former Vice President feels that his interest is better served elsewhere, we don’t have any issues against that.
“We can always wish him good luck. For us, the task of building a political party is not a day’s job; it is a marathon.
 “And, it takes many years and we will continue to improve on our system to get the kind of party we want to really build, “ Abdullahi said.
He stressed that it took many years to build a strong political party, adding that parties were made up of different persons, some happy and some sad.
Abdullahi added that everybody would have to take decisions at some point in time.
He, however, said that the APC was not bothered about the rumoured exit of the former vice president from the party until it saw the number of people that would move with him.
He maintained that those remaining in the party would continue to work for it, build it and make it stronger in the interest of all.