The Arewa Progressive Women League has described the Peoples Democratic Party presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar as a fraud.
Recall that the Arewa Consultative Forum and the Northern Elders Forum recently met with Atiku and other selected presidential candidates.
The group, reacting to the meeting, in a statement by its leader, Hannatu Abbass said Atiku is too corrupt to be presented as a consensus candidate for the North.
The group said Atiku and ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo created the pathway for Nigeria’s struggle with poverty through their non-transparent privatisation process.
They added that the Arewa Elders lacked intergrity for endorsing Atiku.
“It is the height of lack of integrity and shame for the same old people who were dismissed as non-existent by Atiku Abubakar to now lead the paid campaign for endorsing him as the region’s sole presidential candidate.
“We are living witnesses to the remarks by Atiku in 2010 that the Northern region had no elders referring to the same sate of old men today bandying him as consensus northern presidential candidate.
“The World Bank, which is the body that provides a global poverty headcount had noted that slightly over 98 million Nigerians were living in multi-dimensional poverty, indicating that 60.9 percent of Nigerians, or 100 million people, were living below the poverty threshold in 2010, and 120 million in 2012 .
“Interestingly, the period the country had an exponential spike in the number of people living below $1 a day was during the 16 unbroken years that the former Vice-President’s party held sway in Nigeria,” the Group said.