The campaign organisation, in a statement by its spokesperson, Kola Ologbondiyan, on Saturday, dismissed the report as “merely contrived, imaginary and completely illusory.”
It said the report did not reflect the reality on the ground, claiming that the APC candidate did not stand a chance before the Peoples Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, and his running mate, Ifeanyi Okowa.
The PUNCH reported that in the Fitch’s report, it was predicted that while Tinubu might win, Atiku’s votes could be split by the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi.
The report also said the victory of Tinubu, could, however, spark political unrest after the 2023 elections.
However, the campaign organisation noted that “contrary to the report being peddled by the APC, Asiwaju Tinubu is battling with trust issues, stamina concerns, massive open rejection by a majority of voters across the country, the mass exodus from his APC into PDP due to the abysmal failures of his party in addition to his (Tinubu’s) self-confessed selfish motives for being in the presidential race.
“In reality, unlike Atiku, Tinubu has no strong, organic and reliable political base anywhere in the country and cannot get the required 25 per cent in the majority of the states of the federation.
“Across the North, the APC presidential candidate does not have a stable political structure with the daily decamping of hordes of Nigerians in the region who voted for the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) in 2015 and 2019 now crossing over to the PDP to support Atiku in the 2023 elections.”
Atiku’s council added that even in the the South, “Tinubu has no solid base in the South-South and South-East where he has been roundly rejected. Even in the South-West, the former Lagos State governor has been demystified as evidenced in his party’s devastating loss in the last governorship election in Osun State, a state considered to be his ancestry home, to the PDP.”
“Asiwaju Tinubu has been booed in states of the South-West and he has lost his political allies, cultural institutions and foot soldiers in Lagos State and other parts of the South West because of his selfish posturing and trust issues.
The campaign team claimed that Atiku had an organic followership across demographic groupings, saying Nigerians should disregard the Fitch report.
“The reality of the 2023 presidential election is that Atiku has the highest organic followership cutting across all demographics like age, class, ethnic, sectional and even political affiliations in the country as Nigerians believe in his proven capacity, competence, experience, readiness and will power to lead our nation at this point.
“Nigerians should therefore disregard the said Fitch Report as it does not reflect the reality of the 2023 presidential election in Nigeria,” the statement said.
