Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has said it was an error tagging governors and members of the new Peoples Democratic Party (“New PDP”) with “rebel” appellation. He said they were the people that came together to champion crusades to return the party to the dreams of its founding fathers.
Speaking to a social media, Premium Times yesterday, Atiku said people “are not leading a rebellion against the party.” He explained that “what we are doing is to further strengthen the PDP and reconnect it to the Nigerian people.”
According to him, when PDP was formed in 1998, “one cardinal objective of the party is to stamp out dictatorship and executive high-handedness in Nigeria,” disclosing that “It was commonly agreed upon among the founding fathers of the party that the PDP was going to be a political party that will operate and function by the rules, and that decision-making in the party would comply with democratic norms.”
Atiku, however, regretted that “along the line, and not too long after the party won the presidential election in 1999 and also won the majority of seats in the National Assembly, the PDP began to change in character and in content.”
The change in character, he stated, “had to do with the fact that some elements in the leadership of the party began to wield an iron fist; and the change in content began when the PDP started to change its own laws to gratify the desires of a few powerful individuals in the party.”
He said, “the effort to correct the wrongs in the PDP didn’t just start now, and that is why I will want to correct you on the appellation of ‘rebel governors,’ emphasizing that, “those of us who have come together to champion crusades to return the PDP to the dreams of its founding fathers are not leading a rebellion against the party,” but were trying to further strengthen the PDP and reconnect it to the Nigerian people.
On 2015, Atiku said: “My presidential ambition dates back to 1992 when I stepped down for the late Bashorun MKO Abiola. Since that time, I have been at the forefront of every presidential contest in Nigeria. I am a democrat to the core and I believe that the only way to earn and run a successful presidency is by a popular mandate, through the mechanisms of a political party. Every democratic government, in the true sense of the term, stands on a tripod: the candidate, the political party and the people.
“These three cords have to be well knitted before you can campaign for, and win a presidency. So, anybody who wants to be president through the mechanisms of a political party must be interested in reconnecting the party to the Nigerian people. It (presidency) is not a birth right. The difference I had wished to make when I ran was to give back to a country that has done so much for me. I owe Nigeria; Nigeria does not owe me,” he said.
On his relationship with the National Chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, the Turaki Adamawa stated thus: “Alhaji Bamanga Tukur is a respectable citizen of Nigeria, who has contributed immensely to the growth of our national economy through his involvement in the private sector. I cannot hold any grouse against such a person, even if we don’t share the same kindred.”
Source: Sun
