A year after declaring that it would midwife an alternative between the two dominant political parties in Nigeria – the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) – the Red Card Movement has made a u-turn and endorsed PDP Presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, for next week’s presidential election.
This is even as the political mobilisation group promised Atiku 20 million votes and disassociated itself from its founder and former Education Minister, Oby Ezekwesili.
Co-chairman of the movement, Tony Akabuno, stated this at a press conference in Abuja on Thursday.
Akabuno disclosed that after Ezekwesili resigned from the group in November 2018 to pursue her presidential ambition, feedback from its structures and members at the states, local councils, wards and polling units revealed that ‘only the main opposition PDP has the capacity to dislodge Buhari’.
“As the co-chair of RCM, I decided to align with our foot soldiers. Some co-conveners also supported this position of focusing on reviewing the performance of the leadership in power, and not be distracted with historical performance of past regimes.
“Some co-conveners were of the opinion that we should not get into any arrangement with PDP. These ones suggested a “Siddon look approach”. They appealed to me, as one that is very close to the state champions, to persuade our leaders across the federation to desist from supporting the Atiku/Obi ticket. But as a pragmatic political strategist and the peoples’ general, I had no choice than to reject the inferior argument of some co-coveners and strongly aligned with our state champions, who are in sync with the grassroots,” he said.
According to him, it is delusional to think that any other political party, apart from the PDP, can dislodge the APC.
He expressed optimism that the Atiku/Obi Presidency will assemble a good management team and ultimately restructure the country.
He described the PDP Presidential candidate as a pan Nigerian who understands the peculiarities of each region and tribe.
“Atiku’s policies will take Nigeria out of the woods and put the country back on track. Atiku’s promise of restructuring the nation and provision of jobs for the unemployed are key to a nation’s development and the Red Card Movement is ready to lend our weight behind the PDP candidate in order not to have a repeat of the 2015 scenario. We are on the same page with Atiku and whatever we do, we do it well.
“The coming election will be a defining moment in the political history of our country. Buhari has failed in all his cardinal programmes of improving the economy, provision of adequate security and fighting corruption. He has instead been playing politics with corruption. We cannot perform experiment with the presidency. This is not about Buhari but about the future of the country. The question is if we want the status quo to remain or if we want a change.
“We the leaders of RCM are not in doubt that Atiku/Obi ticket is the most efficacious brand that can send Buhari to Daura…. Our mandate is Buhari must go! This is not negotiable,” the RCM Co-Chairman said.
He argued that even if all the votes of the other political parties are put together, they can’t garner up to 10 percent of the total votes cast.
He was flanked at the briefing by other leaders of the Movement across the country.
OWEDE AGBAJILEKE, Abuja
