10th February, 2014
Former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has vowed not to return to the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Nigeria’s ruling party which he co-founded about 15 years ago.
Atiku made this declaration in an interview with TheNEWS magazine shortly after he defected to the opposition All Progressive Congress, APC, last week.
According to him, “I won’t go back to the PDP ever again. There is no reason for doing so whatsoever. As I have said before, I have no reason to go back to the PDP. I am equally prepared to help the APC with the election whoever is its candidate.”
Atiku who also took PDP to the cleaners, said lack of internal democracy is the bane of the party.
“Lack of internal democracy and level-playing ground was basically the reason I left the party. The party has left the people. It has left the country. When I returned to the party in 2008 from ACN in response to the reconciliation policy, I did so with the hope that the party was ready for reform. Unfortunately, there was no sincerity to restoring the party to the path of democratic ideals for which it was founded.
“The problem became worse when presidents took personal ownership of the party, which automatically made it impossible for anybody to voice an opinion other than that of the so called ‘leaders’.”
He insisted that PDP is beyond redemption, adding that no chairman of the party including the current one, Adamu Mu’azu can change anything as long as the president is determined to be the sole owner of the party.
Read the incisive interview in the current edition of TheNEWS magazine sold nationwide.