Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has called on former members of the party who defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to return home. He stated this on Tuesday when he paid a courtesy call on the leadership of the PDP at the national secretariat in Abuja. The ex-VP who dumped the party four years ago to the All Progressives Congress (APC), resigned from the APC and announced his formal return to the PDP at the weekend.
Atiku expressed optimism that the opposition PDP will win the 2019 general elections, adding that APC is yet to meet 50 per cent of PDP’s achievements. While admitting that the party made mistakes in the past, he expressed happiness that the party has learnt its lessons. His words: “I, therefore, want to pledge to you Mr Chairman and members of the National Working Committee that my returning home is to help continue with the sort you have started, reforming, re-branding this very party which is the only party in this country.
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“Let me pay tribute to past leadership of this great party; where ever they may be and to call upon them to please return home as I have done. It is only by their returning home that we will build a stronger, more united party that can again return to government and continue to deliver the dividends of democracy. I can bet you the records we have achieved so far in governance no government has yet even done 50 per cent of what we have achieved in government, not to talk of equalling our performance in government.
“We should remember that those of us who founded this party, founded it on the principles of democracy, good governance, unity of this country and the prosperity of its people”. Those who have left the party include former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Senate President Bukola Saraki, Speaker House of Representatives Yakubu Dogara, former National Chairmen of the party Barnabas Gemade and Audu Ogbeh respectively.
Others are five former governors of the party: Rotimi Amaechi (Rivers); Rabiu Kwankwaso (Kano); Aliyu Wamakko (Sokoto); Abdulfatah Ahmed (Kwara) and Murtala Nyako (Adamawa) as well as other federal lawmakers in the 8th National Assembly. On his part, National Chairman of the party Ahmed Makarfi stated that Atiku’s return will open a floodgate of other returnees to the party.
