Presidential candidate of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, says ruling All Progressives Congress “alliance of convenience” will collapse after defeat in the 2023 presidential election.
Atiku stated this shortly after the inauguration of the youth wing of PDP’s Presidential Campaign Council in Abuja on Thursday.
Recall that the APC is a merger of three largest opposition parties: the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), led by Bola Ahmed Tinubu, former Lagos governor; the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) led by then General Muhammadu Buhari, and the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) along with a breakaway faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and the new PDP.
But Atiku said the PDP, being the oldest political party in Nigeria, had over the years gained enough experience and grounds to sustain Nigeria’s democracy.
“You see, to be honest, PDP is the only party in this country. The APC is an alliance between CPC and Tinubu’s party. We are going to defeat them at the polls and then they will be dead. I do not see them survive after,” he said.
The PDP presidential candidate, however, urged the newly inaugurated National Youth Campaign Council, drawn from the six geo-political zones to take his message of hope down to the nooks and crannies of their wards and inspire in them his agenda of resetting and rescuing Nigeria.
PDP’s vice-presidential candidate and Governor of Delta State, Ifeanyi Okowa said Nigeria is in distress in the hands of APC and in dire need of a “chief medical consultant” in the person of Atiku Abubakar to revive it from coma.
But Okowa said the task of reclaiming Nigeria from years of misrule by APC rests squarely on the Nigerian youths to make the right choice by investing their future in the hands of Atiku who has always spoken truth to them and shun the pack of lies and deceit by the ruling party and its candidate.
PDP Deputy National Chairman (North), Ambassador Umar Iliya Damagum, who represented the National Chairman, Iyochia Ayu also charged the youths to seize the opportunity offered by the PDP to create the kind of change they truly deserve even as he called on them to eschew violence.
Also present at the well attended event were the Director-General of the PDP Presidential Campaign Organization, Aminu Tambuwal; the Deputy Director General of Operations and former Governor of Cross Rivers State, Liyel Imoke and a member of PDP Board of Trustees, High Chief Raymond Dokpesi.