Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar on Thursday adduced reasons why he refused to run against President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2003.
He said he declined the invitation,which would have made him to contest the presidential ticket of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party with Obasanjo, on moral grounds.
Atiku, who was said to be responding to a remarks from one of the participants at his South-West consultative meeting in Ibadan on Thursday, noted that contrary to the notion that his best chance to have emerged as the president of the country was in 2003 when stakeholders in the PDP offered him the opportunity to contest against his former boss, President Olusegun Obasanjo, he still found it difficult to accept the offer because doing so would be going against the position the PDP had earlier taken at a Caucus meeting to retain the presidency in the South.
A statement by the Atiku’s media office in Abuja said the former Vice President noted that his ambition and indeed that of any politician could not be realised in negation and commitment to party decisions.
“Yes I may nurse legitimate ambition but I am not the kind of person who will want to climb the political ladder because an opportunity cheaply presents itself. You don’t have to stand in the way of commitment to party decisions because you stand the opportunity to benefit from an infraction,” Atiku said.
The statement said a snap vote taken at the end of the South-west leg of the consultative meeting at the Golden Tulip Hotel showed that the All Progressives Congress as the preferred party with 60 per cent , Peoples Democratic Movement followed with 29 per cent while support for the PDP was said to be 11 per cent.