Atiku to PDP: Our focus should be on rebuilding the party — not elections

Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has asked the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to focus on strengthening and rebuilding the party.

In a tweet on Saturday morning, the presidential candidate of the opposition party in the 2019 election said the time is not yet ripe for the discussion of elections.

He said the party’s priority at the moment should be on how to tackle the challenges ahead.

“Our preoccupation at this point in the @OfficialPDPNig should not focus on elections, but on rebuilding and strengthening our party for the challenges ahead of us,” Abubakar wrote on Twitter.

Our preoccupation at this point in the @OfficialPDPNig should not focus on elections, but on rebuilding and strengthening our party for the challenges ahead of us. -AA

— Atiku Abubakar (@atiku) January 4, 2020

Atiku’s tweet comes after reports of threat over zoning of the 2023 general election.

Two days ago, Walid Jibrin, chairman of the board of trustees (BoT) of the PDP, had said some people threatened him for not endorsing Atiku as the party’s presidential candidate for 2023.

While announcing that the party would soon commence the search for its presidential candidate in the next general election, Jibrin had said the candidate could be from any zone.

But speaking to journalists on Thursday in Kaduna, the elder statesman said he had received calls for not saying the party’s presidential ticket would be zoned to the north-east, where Atiku is from.

Jibrin said he was tagged a traitor for failing to declare Atiku as his party’s preferred candidate.

“I have received calls from some people threatening my life over my coming out not to mention that the presidency of this country be zoned to the north-east,” he had said.

“They were saying that I am a traitor that I should have come out to say that it is only Atiku Abubakar because I said that Atiku was already overthrown by the supreme court. They said for that I should say Atiku is the man that I want.”

In November, the national working committee (NWC) of the party, said the PDP would not stop any of its members, irrespective of geographical zones, from vying to clinch the party’s presidential ticket.