In a swift reaction, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Osita Okechukwu, has asked the former governor of Jigawa state, Sule Lamido, to be ready to tell Nigerians what his party, the People Democratic Party, did in the last 16 years to warrant another shot at the presidency.
Lamido made this known on Monday while speaking with journalists at his village, Bamaina, Birnin-kudu local government area of the state.
He admitted, though, that he would have to first earn it, as nobody gets the PDP presidential ticket on a platter of gold.
“If my party finds me worthy of the party’s presidential ticket to serve Nigeria, I will thank God and oblige,” he said.
“Although there are issues in the party that we are all working to resolve, we hope to have success soon and come out united. As I’m talking to you now, we are working silently to resolve our differences and bring back to our fold those that left the party for APC.”
He blamed PDP’s underwhelming outing at the 2015 general election on its internal crisis.
“PDP has the capacity to rule the country again but the members must work hard to achieve that,” he added, while also denying any rift with his successor, Muhammad Badaru of APC.
“We have mutual respect for each other and I have no differences with him other than political ideologies.”
Earlier on Saturday, Lamido, seeking to explain the poor performance of PDP in the north at the 2015 general election, had claimed that many northerners did not have the freedom to vote their choices because of the branding of the PDP as a Christian party.
“In the build-up to the last general election, PDP was vilified, intimidated with religion, falsehoods and propaganda through Facebook postings. Rwandan genocide pictures were posted as Boko Haram victims. PDP was blackmailed into silence,” he said.
“When you queued to vote in the north, people viewed you as an infidel. You were all there and these things happened in a country where freedom should be the operating word. APC man can vote APC but if Lamido votes PDP, he is a Christian; he is a pastor.”
The spokesman of the South-East zone of the APC, Mr. Osita Okechukwu, who described Lamido’s declaration of his 2019 presidential ambition as a welcome development, said the former governor has to tell Nigerians what his party, PDP, could not do while in office for 16 years that he is coming back to correct.
However, while reacting to the Lamido’s declaration at the national secretariat Abuja, Okechukwu said Alhaji Lamido has a constitutional right to run for the office but he must save Nigerians all form of sentiments.
“Why not as long as the person saved us the agony of not telling us that the South has been marginalised or the north has been marginalised then we are on the same berth.
It is now incumbent on him to tell us his programme what he want to do that PDP did not do in the last sixteen years or whether for him, PDP did so well, if he tells us the PDP did so well, then we have enough armour and arms to confront him with.
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