The leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party and its presidential candidate for the 2023 election, Atiku Abubakar, are mulling over the option of engaging the presidential candidates of the Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi, and the New Nigeria Peoples Party, Rabiu Kwankwaso, in talks on how to work together to defeat the ruling All Progressives Congress.
Obi, who is a former governor of Anambra State and Atiku’s running mate in the 2019 presidential election, and Kwankwaso, a former governor of Kano State, were members of the PDP before they defected to their respective parties to actualise their presidential ambitions.
It was gathered that the PDP was considering how to enlist their support and form a formidable team to defeat the candidate of the APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.
The opposition party believed that Obi and Kwankwaso’s defections could affect the fortunes of the party in the February 25, 2023 presidential election.
There are concerns that Obi’s exit will further split the votes of the South, which is the PDP’s stronghold, while Kwankwaso’s exit will have a similar effect in the North, especially Kano State, which has bloc votes. If allowed to happen, the party fears it will work in favour of the APC, which already has more states in the North.
Obi, who had obtained the N40m presidential forms of the PDP before he defected, was said to have left the party due to the unfriendliness of one of the governors of the party in the South-South.
Kwankwaso, a former Minister of Defence, was also the foremost leader of the party in Kano State before his defection.
A former National Chairman of the PDP, Prince Uche Secondus, in an interview said that the result of the 2019 presidential election had shown that the PDP needed to get all the votes it could from all the states, especially northern states with higher numbers of voters.
His words,”In Kano State, President (Muhammadu) Buhari won in all the 44 local government areas with 1.4 million votes, while Atiku got 391,593 votes. Though the incumbent governor of the state, Abdullahi Ganduje, won the governorship election on the platform of the APC in 2019, it was a tight race between his party and the PDP. So, the PDP has prospects in the state, which is why it has to do what is necessary to get the maximum possible from the state.
“The 2019 governorship election results, which were a combination of the March 9 election and the March 23 rerun, showed the APC polled 1,033,695 votes, while the PDP scored 1,024,713 votes. With the above analysis, you will see that the PDP will need the cooperation of the two gentlemen to remain popular and win these states.”
However, Secondus refused to comment on what the party and Atiku planned to do to woo the two men, whom he described as “valuable persons” to the party.
The Chairman of the PDP Board of Trustees, Senator Walid Jibrin, also said there were possibilities that votes from the South-East could be split into three with Obi’s candidacy.
“We may have a situation whereby Obi will have some votes from there (South-East), then our party and the APC will get votes as well. We need to work against that. The South-East is our zone and we know the people and the voters there will not abandon us,” he stated.
This, according to findings, is the reason the PDP and Atiku are considering speaking with Obi and Kwankwaso to enlist their support.
A source privy to the planned discussions said, “We will talk to them. The battle ahead is not personal. We need to win the election and rescue the country from the bad governance of the ruling party. Thank God that we have about nine months ahead of us before the conduct of the general elections.
“We have enough time to engage people and solidify whatever agreement we want to propose. We should not allow this opportunity to slip from our hands.”
Original story culled from The PUNCH.
