RE: FORWARDING OF PROPOSED LIST OF APPOINTMENTS TO THE CABINET OF HIS EXCELLENCY ALHAJI ATIKU ABUBAKAR THE INCOMING PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA BY GOD’S GRACE

The attention of the Atiku Presidential Campaign Organisation, (APCO), has been drawn to a fake correspondence purportedly signed by “Lt. General Aliyu Muhammad Gusau, CFR, (Rtd),” dated February 22, 2023. The document is “addressed to “His Excellency, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Presidential Flag Bearer of the Peoples Democratic Party.”

The concoction, which has been making the rounds in the last 48 hours, is headed: “FORWARDING OF PROPOSED LIST OF APPOINTMENTS TO THE CABINET OF HIS EXCELLENCY ALHAJI ATIKU ABUBAKAR THE INCOMING PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA BY GOD’S GRACE.”

A fabrication such as this will ordinarily not have engaged the attention of the Atiku-Okowa Presidential Project as we speak. We, however, need to debunk the wholesale falsehood and fallacy which the scurrilous document represents. From the very top to the bottom, the correspondence is riddled by contrivance and fakery of unimaginable proportions. First, as a heavily decorated General who retired from active military service three decades ago, General Gusau will not be found with a letterhead bearing the insignia of the Nigerian Army. Similarly, those close to General Gusau very well, know that his official documents do not feature grandiose headings supposedly bearing his name and honours.

For proper education of the disingenuous fabricators of the document, the first name of the authentic General Gusau is not spelt “MUHAMMAD.” The fit and proper manner he is addressed and documented is: *Lt. General Aliyu Mohammed Gusau, GCON.*
General Gusau’s national honour, is not “CFR” as featured in the mis-advised letter.

The authors of that mischief are also not familiar with the manner that *His Excellency, Atiku Abubakar, GCON,* has opted to be addressed in almost 25 years now. With every sense of humility, he has long expressed preferences to be referred to, without a prefix in whatever form. The illiterate inventors of the junk not only forgot to acknowledge Atiku’s well-earned national honour, they would also separate the compound word, “Flagbearer.” Official references to the “Peoples’ Democratic Party,” traditionally have the acronym “PDP,” behind it in brackets.

For a presidential election which is yet to be held, it is utterly presumptuous for the cobblers of the said missive from “General Gusau,” to imagine that the appropriation of offices and positions is the present, nay imminent preoccupation of the PDP flagbearer as we speak. Far from it. Like every well-meaning Nigerian and offshore stakeholder in the Nigerian Project, the matter of immediate concern, is the prosecution and delivery of elections which are free, fair, credible and acceptable.

We needn’t continue the laborious deconstruction of that contrived communication between “General Gusau” and His Excellency, Atiku Abubakar, having sufficiently deconstructed the laughable worthlessness of the paper. For added measure, this is a document which is not signed or initialled in any way. What then is authenticity and veracity of a document as disposable as tissue paper?

*Tunde Olusunle, PhD, Special Adviser, Media and Publicity to Atiku Abubakar, GCON, Presidential Candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP)*