Presidential candidate of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria, ACPN, Obiageli Ezekwesili has denied allegations made against her by the party following her withdrawal from the presidential race.

She described the allegations as lies, stating that she decided to immediately sacrifice her candidacy to uphold her values by withdrawing.

“As for the defamatory statements made against my person by the ACPN leadership in their malicious statement, I want Nigerians to know that there is no iota of truth in any of them,” the former minister of education said in an emailed statement on Friday.

Obiageli Ezekwesili Photo — Obiageli Ezekwesili

“Everything ACPN wrote or said of the campaign donations is fabrication and outright lies. Our campaign was conducted with the highest level of transparency and accountability with impeccable evidence.”

She said the party’s immediate endorsement of APC’s President Muhammadu Buhari showed why she had to “swiftly depart from their midst” and that the party’s leadership was neck-deep in transactional politics. Ezekwesili insisted that apart from the need to form a coalition, the difference in values and vision between her and the party informed her decision to quit the race.

She affirmed that: “Nigeria and Nigerians deserve a new order of ethical, competent and capable leadership. I had earlier assumed the ACPN was aligned with me to offer that, until it proved otherwise. The values and vision divergence with the party was a key factor that triggered my withdrawal from the presidential race on their ticket prompting me to dissociate immediately in order to help build a coalition for Good Governance. It is why I was instant in sacrificing my candidacy to uphold my values by withdrawing.”