The Action Congress of Nigeria  (ACN), Presidential candidate, Malam Nuhu Ribadu, has decribed as an April Fool’s joke, the rumour making the rounds that he has stepped down for the presidential candidate of the Congress of Progressive Change (CPC), General Muhammadu Buhari, in what is termed a consensus arrangement.

In a statement, Saturday, Ribadu said he had not stepped down for anybody contrary to the rumour, noting that ‘’this is wicked falsehood, and a piece of mindless propaganda.”

According to him: “I have not and could never betray the confidence of Nigerians by trading my candidacy for any other person. So, this claim remains a lie and a poor attempt to manipulate the electorate  to seek cheap victory.

“Second, I want to stress the point that this cheap scheme is deliberately calculated to abort our democratic march through manipulation, and through the hijack of our right to electoral choice, a central value of a true democracy.’’

Ribadu told ‘’all the architects of this devilish scheme” that their electoral manipulation only goes to feed into the machinations of the same forces of misrule and darkness that had kept our nation down for the past two decades.  “If it is not clear to them that they are in bed with  PDP, Nigerians are finally getting to know now whose interest they are working to advance,” he added.