FORMER Vice President, Atiku Abubakar and presidential candidate of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2019 presidential election, has reacted to the physical assault on the immediate past Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, in Nuremberg, Germany, describing as an uncivilised and undemocratic action.
Atiku wrote on Twitter on Monday using his official handle, @atiku that he waited to speak privately with the attacked senator before making his statement public.
“I waited to speak privately with Ike before making a public statement and I have expressed my full and total repudiation of the unfortunate incident with him,” he wrote.
While condemning the assault on the former deputy senate president, he said no one deserves such mob action, least of all a man who is a specimen of what a democrat should be.
“A champion of the rights of the people of the Southeast and Nigeria, and a patriot par excellence.”
Atiku said Nigerians, and especially those who were misguided into physically assaulting Senator Ekweremadu, will do well to remember the patriotic roles he played in saving Nigeria from a constitutional crisis in 2010, when there was a lacuna in the Presidency.
“He and then Senate President David Mark midwifed the Doctrine of Necessity that stabilised the nation. But for that patriotic action, our democracy might have been terminated,” he said.
“If those who were involved in that crass action had given due thought to the role Ike has played in nation-building, they would have celebrated a man who has made sacrifices for their good.”
He called on those behind the assault to turn a new leaf and repudiate violence in all its forms, to seek peace and pursue it and to learn to give honour to whom it is due.
“To Senator Ekweremadu, I say that my family and I, and indeed most Nigerians, hold you in the highest esteem. An esteem that cannot be shaken by this incident,”Atiku said.
