Atiku: I’m not Obasanjo, so I won’t break promises

Former vice president Atiku Abubakar

Former vice president Atiku Abubakar said yesterday that he would abide by the zoning policy and serve out only one term as president if he wins the elections. In an interview with Reuters news agency in London, Abubakar also pledged that if President Goodluck Jonathan won the PDP primaries, he would accept the result and drop out of the race.

Asked if he would not be tempted to go for a second term, like former president Olusegun Obasanjo attempted to stand for as third term, Abubakar said, “I am not Obasanjo. That was one of the major disagreements between Obasanjo and myself, not keeping to constitutional provisions and also breaking agreements.”

On if he would defect to another party if he lost the PDP primaries to Jonathan, the former vice president said: “I would not consider that. That (a possible Jonathan victory) would be the decision of the party.”

Abubakar said the late President Umaru Yar’adua’s ill health had stopped him from achieving much, while the transition to Jonathan had been messy. “I would say, four wasted years,” he said.

“My approach would be to return to fiscal discipline, accumulation of comfortable foreign reserves and keeping the excess crude (windfall oil savings account) to actually invest in infrastructure and education,” he pledged.

Abubakar said he hoped the 2011 election would be more credible than the 2007 poll. “We have a more credible leadership (at INEC), but my worry is that the leadership has not been given time to restructure INEC ... It’s just like bringing a clean person to sit over a rotten structure, that is my worry,” he said.

“My feeling is that it will be better than before, somehow. There is a change of attitude from the political leadership, which is committed to a more credible democratic process”.

. and the electorate is becoming more enlightened.”

Support from PDP state governors, powerful figures who can often command big blocks of voters, is seen as essential for winning the party ticket.

Asked how many governors were supporting him and how many were behind Jonathan, Abubakar declined to give a figure because he said some of them were still wavering.