Atiku Seeking ‘Venezuela Option’ Is Treason, Buhari Group Says

The Buhari Media Organisation, BMO has accused the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP in the February 23 election, Atiku Abubakar of committing a treasonable act with horrible consequences.

BMO made the claim in a statement it issued and signed by its coordinator, Niyi Akinsiju, and secretary Cassidy Madueke, entitled: “BMO to Atiku: Soliciting Venezuela option is treasonable felony”

The statement alleged that Mr. Atiku, has been seeking to destabilise the country in a bid to realise his failed ambition to be President, and called on security agencies to investigate his alleged unholy romance with foreign bodies “especially the United States of America, in pursuit of a mandate he never had.”

Part of the statement reads: “Atiku had been lobbying the US authorities to recognise him as authentic President, “even though he overwhelmingly lost the February 23 Presidential election to President Muhammadu Buhari

“We had in the past drawn attention to the desperation of the failed PDP Presidential candidate to rule Nigeria at all cost and it is becoming more obvious with his latest gambit.

“Not satisfied with pushing out cooked-up figures which he and his party claimed they got from the server of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and are using as the basis of their legal challenge at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, Alhaji Abubakar is now using lobbyists in order to con the United States to his side.

“We at BMO are not surprised because we had raised an alarm even before the election that PDP elements had been preparing ground for what they called a ‘Venezuelan option’ by instigating the international community against the President Buhari-led administration, and by raising all sorts of false alarms.

“And now that news has filtered out that Atiku has hired some prominent American lawyers to lobby the US Congress and the Executive to recognise him as President, it beggars belief that a man who rose to the position of Vice President could be engaged in acts that amount to treasonable felony, especially as the legally authorised body in election matters, INEC, declared that he lost the Presidential election.”

It also pointed that some of the measures being taken by the Atiku to win American support is the ploy that he is the man to prevent ‘genocide, poverty, corruption and strife’ in Nigeria.

“We have seen how banditry has suddenly threatened to spiral out of control in Zamfara State and some other parts of North-Western Nigeria almost immediately after the election. These are places that were relatively peaceful before and during the election and which also had a reasonable turn out of voters.

“It should not be a surprise that this spectre of violence is deliberately orchestrated and coordinated as part of a game plan to make the incumbent President look helpless and win US support for the failed PDP presidential candidate who is not even known to be popular in that part of the country,” BMO added.

The pro-Buhari group urged the US authorities to guard against being used by unpatriotic Nigerians to work against an election that their representative in the country had hailed as largely free and fair.

“Even though Ambassador Stuart Symington had, in the run up to the election appeared to show some sympathy for the opposition, apparently based on media reports that had been deliberately skewed to present the incumbent in bad light, he was fair enough to rate the election as reasonably credible.

“We also need to remind the Americans that the main local election observer group they funded, the Youth Initiative for Advocacy, Growth and Advancement (YIAGA) validated Buhari’s victory as declared by INEC, using a Parallel Voter Tabulation (PVT) compiled by 3,030 observers,” the group said.