The Governorship Candidates of the main opposition party in Nigeria, PDP, have been urged to reconcile with whoever opposed them and work together in order to come back after the 2023 elections with at least 25 Governors.
The Chairman of the Party Dr Iyorchia Ayu gave the advice while giving certificates of return to the Governorship candidates at the party’s headquarters in Abuja.
He said; “This exercise is partly a recognition of your hard work.. Many of you have contributed enormously to the growth of this party and I want to thank you for your loyalty to the party. I want to congratulate you for this achievement. But remember, many are called but few are chosen. A few of you have been chosen to be our flag-bearers in various states in the forth coming elections.
“On behalf of the National Working Committee, NWC and the rest of the party nationwide and in the Diaspora, I want to promise you all our support, we will give you the necessary support.
”We hope and pray for you that by this time next year, you will all be referred to as the incoming Governor of your respective states.”
The Chairman said; ” We believe that the PDP will go back to its winning ways. When we started in 1999, we were able to produce 21 Governors, we grew that number in 2003 to 28 are sustained it at 28 up to 2007.
”Unfortunately, we came through hard times and the number declined. Today we have only 13 Governors, for a political party of this nature. That is not good enough.”
Dr Ayu called on the candidates to carry everybody along who contested with them especially the aspirants because they contributed in mobilising and growing the party.
Responding on behalf of the Candidates, the Governor of Bauchi State, Mr Bala Mohammed thanked the party and the leaders for the opportunity and believing in them.
“This moment is a moment of happiness, a moment of accomplishment because we all toiled hard for this. Our dear presidential candidate, we want to assure you that the party has gone through all the due diligence to make sure you emerge as our candidate and we have seen the internal democracy that had been conducted to ensure peace in the party,” Governor Mohammed stated.
He promised they would work with the Presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar in ensuring that there would be no problem in all the states of the Federation to make sure he emerged as the president of Nigeria.
“We assure you there will be synergy. There will be cooperation. And we are going to work assiduously to make sure that our party emerge victorious at the various levels with the party having confidence in us. We know we are in the opposition and we are not going to relent until we become the ruling party in our country Nigeria,” Mr Mohammed explained.
One of the Governorship candidates, Alhaji Ladi Adebutu said the journey was far and they still had many odds to across but they were not perturbed by the job ahead because they were driven by needs to set the people free from the shackles of poor governance.
Alhaji Adebutu said they took it as a challenge to work harder and they were particularly grateful that the people and the party for the platform which had given them the opportunity to go forward and rescue our state.
He said; “By and large this is the first primaries conducted by a panel empowered by the national body. Yes it’s okay for people to empower the panel to conduct primaries, there’s nothing wrong with that but that is not a PDP panel. The PDP has constituted, empowered a panel that was supervised, observed by INEC in accordance with laws of the land, the electoral law and this process has been found to be transparent and good enough to be authenticated today to have produced a candidate for Ogun state and this certificate certify such. This is the first time we have had such in Ogun state for a while.”
He said; “It is now a duty for all concerned to go forward and do reconciliation and I can assure you that we have already embarked on that duty. We will continue to reach out to those that feel that they have a grouse. I am sure that with time, we shall have total reconciliation and we shall even extend hands of fellowship beyond the party and make it an intra party thing. Because we can even see fellow brothers from other parties trying to join our party now and I am sure that after their convention, we shall be welcoming them.”
Mercy Chukwudiebere
