Obasanjo’s letter vindicates us, we’re Nigeria’s best hope for 2019- PDP

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has welcomed the explosive letter of former president Olusegun Obasanjo to President Muhammadu Buhari in which he scathingly criticized him and advised him against running in 2019, claiming it vindicates its long-held position that Buhari was unfit to govern Nigeria, while presenting itself as the only viable option come 2019.

The party however rejected the call by Obasanjo for the emergence of a third force, saying that such would amount to repeating the same blunder it claimed brought in what it described as the “ideologically vacuous APC and the Buhari Presidency”.

PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, in a statement in Abuja on Tuesday, said Obasanjo’s counsel had rekindled the faith of the people in the democratic process, stressing however that the solution “does not lie in creating another political quicksand in a third force but consolidating on a rescue mission with the repositioned PDP which Nigerians have already embraced.”

He said Nigerians would recall that in the heat of 2015 elections, many citizens, who claimed to have become tired of the PDP and its government, opted for a coalition of strange bedfellows who he said had little or no experience in governance as a vehicle for electoral victory.

He said, “Expectedly, in their confusion, they have plunged us into this regrettable situation that has brought our nation to its knees.

“PDP maintained that repeating the old mistake of congregating political strangers cannot help our nation at this time, more so, when the few concerns raised by the former President about the PDP no longer obtain under the refocused and rebranded PDP.

Read also: OBASANJO TO BUHARI: Forget second term, you’re not fit

“The PDP is now standing on a truly democratic ground that perfectly represents and reflects the hopes and aspirations of all Nigerians irrespective of their class, creed or tribe.

“That is why our great party has now, more than ever before, become a centre of the new patriotic and broad-based engagements by well-meaning Nigerians and coalitions across the board, including past leaders, in rekindling our democratic process that places priority on returning power to the people.

“The fact is that Nigerians overrated President Buhari in 2015 but they have now seen that he never possessed the capacity and the required aptitude to effectively govern our great nation and pilot a healthy economy.

“This accounts for the reason former President Obasanjo, just like most Nigerians today, are concerned about the quality of presidential candidates to be presented by various parties for the 2019 election.

“The fact is that while the APC is already caught up with President Buhari, the PDP is open for a new engagement that will throw up the President, which our nation truly deserves at this crucial moment.”

 

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