Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has asked members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to unite and work as a team to win the 2023 elections as the party cannot afford to loose the elections.
The former Vice President stated this while addressing members of the Board of Trustees (BOT) of the party, on Wednesday in Abuja.
He noted that in the next eight years, some of the party chieftains including himself, would retire from politics, stressing that he was worried if the PDP does not win the 2023 presidency.
“I am worried and you should be worried too that if we do not win, it means we will be in opposition again for the next eight years.
“By the next eight years, I don’t know how many will be left in politics and it may even ultimately lead to the death of the party because people gravitate, particularly in developing countries, towards governments.
“Ordinary, people naturally gravitate towards the government. So this is a very crucial and historical moment in history for our survival, I want you to think about it. We are now at a crucial moment in this country.
“For many of you here, it is either we retire together or we move on together”, Abubakar said.
Commenting on the issue of zoning, Abubakar said he was not opposed to rotating the presidency, he maintained that he has dues and he believes the time had come for him to be president.
He said, “In the party, we invented and formulated this zoning policy simply because we wanted every part of this country to have a sense of belonging and I personally have paid my dues on the issue of zoning.
“Many of you were members of our government when all the PDP governors came in 2003 and said I should run and I said no. We have agreed that power should remain in the south-west, Why should I?
“Some of those governors that supported me, some of them went to jail, some of them were kicked out of their offices, we made sure that we kept the policy.
“Therefore, you cannot come and try to imply that the PDP has not been following the zoning policy.
“Some say the south-east has not been given the chance. “When I joined the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) which my friend Bola (Tinubu) set up, he gave me a set of conditions for giving me the ticket, one of which was that I should make him the vice-president.
“I said no, ‘I’m not going to make you vice-president,’ instead, I took senator Ben Obi. “So there is absolutely no reason they should say that there is a deliberate attempt to exclude the south-east in political participation or power-sharing.
“So I thought I should disabuse your mind and of course, as an enlightened political class, I don’t think there’s any deliberate policy to exclude anybody in this country.”
