Deborah’s Killing: Atiku Speaks on Deleted Tweet

The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar has said he deleted his initial tweet on the murder of a 200-level Home Economics student of Shehu Shagari College of Education in Sokoto, Deborah Yakubu because he did not approve the tweet.

He stated this on Sunday night during a live discussion on People’s Townhall, a brainchild of Channels Television and its partners.

Atiku however, said he condemned the killing, which occurred in May, where a female Christian student was allegedly lynched for blasphemy.

 Atiku’s tweet criticizing the killing of Deborah drew harsh criticism, but the PDP presidential candidate said he later made “subsequent utterances” in which he expressed his condemnation.

“I asked the tweet to be deleted because I normally approve every tweet. So, since I didn’t approve it, I said, ‘delete. If you read my subsequent statements on that murder, I condemned it.

“There is nowhere it is said or it is an injunction in the Islamic faith that you can go and take somebody’s life, nowhere, it has to be through due process,” the Presidential candidate said.

Meanwhile, Atiku haated that his administration will adopt the United Arab Emirates’ security model in solving the country’s security problems.

In Atiku’s view, deterring criminal activity would be accomplished by adopting the UAE strategy of tracking everyone’s movements.

“The security architecture I admire is the UAE security architecture and it’s primarily based on the monitoring. You don’t see policemen in uniform in UAE, you don’t see soldiers but virtually everybody is being monitored daily and particularly if you are a visitor; from the moment you step into the country or go out, anywhere you are going you are being watched and that is the deployment of technology as far as security is concerned.

“That is to say we are aiming for the ultimate, but we have to deal with our current security structure. How we reform it to ensure that we give our people a more secure environment to undertake their legitimate businesses wherever they may be, whether in the rural areas, semi-urban, and so on?” Atiku said.

Other of their plans include the abolition of multiple foreign exchange rates, ending the subsidy regime on petroleum products, payment of backlog owed to the Academic Staff Union of Universities, and privatisation of national assets, amongst others.