Former Vice president, Atiku Abubakar, said on Wednesday that it was pedestrian for anyone to ask for votes because he could walk or trek some distance.
Atiku, a frontline presidential aspirant on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), was reacting to a statement by the presidency which claimed on Tuesday that President Muhammadu Buhari had shown his fitness to seek re-election in 2019 by walking 800 metres back home from the Eid ground on Tuesday.
After the two-rakat Eid–el-Kabir prayers, President Buhari shunned protocol and walked the 800-metre distance back to his Daura country home in Katsina State.
Perhaps, the presidency had in mind a statement attributed to Aminu Tambuwal, the Sokoto State governor, last week.
Tambuwal was reported as saying that the president was “too old’’ to continue to govern the country beyond 2019 despite his integrity and impeccable character.
But President’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Malam Garba Shehu, said the trekking by the president was a positive response to Tambuwal’s diatribe.
However, in a post on his social media handles, Atiku said though he engaged himself in physical exercise by jogging more than a mile, he wanted Nigerians to vote for him because he worked and not walked.
“I regularly jog more than a mile and exercise, but it will be pedestrian of me to ask Nigerians to vote for me because of that.
“I want my party, the PDP, and Nigerians to vote for me because I work not because I walk. I will work to create jobs. I won’t walk to create an illusion,” he wrote.
