PDP not obligated to zone presidential ticket —Atiku

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has suggested that the All Progressives Congress and not the Peoples Democratic Party is morally obligated to zone the presidential ticket to the South.

He, therefore, said that the PDP should now allow the APC to stampede them into zoning the presidential ticket to the South.

Why he said that he was not opposed to zoning in the PDP, he argued that 14 of PDP’s 16 years in power were led by southern presidents (Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan), hence the party not obligated to zone the position to the South.

He stated this on Tuesday in Abuja when he met the Board of Trustees of the PDP, telling them that they should be united in working towards the victory of the party in 2023.

He asked the BOT members to support his presidential ambition, saying that anything short of victory would not be good for the party.

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He said, “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 government. So this is a very, 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. Many of you here, it is either we retire together or we move on together.”

Atiku said that PDP would score more votes in 2023 if the BoT members worked together.

He said, “Somebody said that we recorded 12 million votes during the last election. Those are not only my votes, those were our votes.

“In achieving or recording those 11 million votes, it was all of us and I believe if we work together again, we can surpass those votes,” he added.

Dismissing insinuations that he was working against the possible zoning of the PDP presidential ticket to the South-east, 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.”

He noted that 14 of PDP’s 16 years in power were led by southern presidents (Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan).

“So we should not be stampeded by the opposition party. They have a moral obligation that is inescapable.

“Some say the South-east have 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,” Atiku said.

He equally recalled that when he got the ticket again in 2019 to run, he took another person from the Southeast, Obi (Peter), as running mate.

“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,” he said.