A veteran journalist and former Senior Adviser on Media and Publicity to Goodluck Jonathan, Reuben Abati, has said that Nigerians voted for the ’emilokan’ manifesto in the last 2023 presidential election.
Abati, the lead anchor in the popular Arise TV breakfast talk show, Morning Show, made this known on Monday.
The statement comes after former Vice President Atiku Abubakar said that Nigerians were inundating him with inquiries on solutions to Nigeria’s current challenges.
Atiku said President Bola Tinubu’s government should be humble enough to borrow from his ideas to solve the country’s challenges in the interest of the Nigerian people.
However, speaking about the matter on TV, Abati said Nigerians rejected Atiku’s manifesto and went for Tinubu’s own in 2023.
According to him, Nigerians have made their choice and so should leave with the choice they made.
He further said that the political elite in the country got it wrong because they have removed the people quotient from the democratic equation.
Abati said: “The main story is the Waziri Adamawa, Atiku Abubakar saying that he would have done better, and the Presidency is saying that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Well, one of the challenges we face in this country is that we run on a presidential system of government.
” A presidential system in which in our own context, ‘the winner takes it all’. And the winner pretends to be a monarch and pretends, you know, to be the supreme authority; even if, the 1999 constitution is effective in that regard that it makes the president the supreme of authority”.