Atiku to hold campaign rally finale in Adamawa on Saturday

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) says the grand finale of its presidential campaign rally will hold in Adamawa.

The opposition party said the “mega rally” will hold at the Mahmud Ribadu square in Yola, the capital of Adamawa on Saturday.

In a statement issued on Wednesday night, Umar Bature, director of field operations, PDP presidential campaign council, asked

members of the party’s national working committee (NWC), governors, national assembly, and national executive committee (NEC), among others, to attend the event.

“Please endeavour to mobilise your supporters massively to participate as we join hands with our presidential candidate, H.E. Atiku Abubakar, GCON, (Waziri Adamawa) to Recover Nigeria,” the statement reads.

So far, the PDP has taken its presidential rally to 33 states and the federal capital territory (FCT), while it is scheduled to hold the penultimate campaign in Taraba on Thursday (Today).

However, the party has been unable to hold its presidential rally in Rivers state.

On Tuesday, the party cancelled the planned campaign rally in Rivers, citing alleged attacks on the members of the campaign team in the state.

Lee Maeba, chairperson of the campaign council in Rivers, said the rally in the state would not hold to avoid members being attacked.

“In the light of the above submission, we the state campaign council, in total constructive engagement with the national presidential campaign council, the candidate, and the party, having seen and evaluated the bodily harm and potential death threats, believe that no loss of life can be tolerated, accepted before, during and after the presidential election, and agree with our principals on the need to shelve and or cancel the rally to avoid any death, because the victory of Atiku Abubakar does not deserve spilling of the blood of even one citizen of Rivers state,” Maeba said.

The PDP is grappling with a division after the party’s primaries which produced Atiku Abubakar as the standard bearer.

The crisis has led to the creation of G5– a group of five governors led by Nyesom Wike, governor of Rivers.

Wike and his allies — including Seyi Makinde of Oyo, Samuel Ortom of Benue, Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia, and Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu — have excluded themselves from the party’s presidential campaign over calls for Iyorchia Ayu to step down as the party’s national chairperson.

The calls for Ayu’s resignation, according to the group, are based on the grounds that the presidential candidate and the national chairperson cannot be from the same region.