The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has described the counsel by former President Olusegun Obasanjo that President Muhammadu Buhari should not run for second term in 2019 as courageous, timeous and patriotic.
It added that the advice had vindicated its position on President Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC).
The party however rejected the call by Obasanjo for the emergence of a third force, saying that such would amount to repeating the same alleged blunder that it claimed brought in what it described as the “ideologically vacuous APC and the Buhari Presidency” which it said had wrecked havoc on the nation in its almost three years of governance.
PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, in a statement in Abuja on Tuesday, said the fact that President Buhari and the APC have irredeemably failed the nation was obvious to all, adding that Nigerians have already taken an irrevocable position against them ahead of the 2019 elections.
According to Ologbondiyan, Obasanjo’s counsel had rekindled the fate 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.
“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.”
