We’ll make our position known this week, says nPDP

Abubakar Baraje, leader of the new Peoples Democratic Party (nPDP), says the group will make its position known to Nigerians before the end of the first week of July.

The faction teamed up with the All Progressives Congress (APC) to dislodge the PDP from power in 2015.

But it later accused the ruling party of marginalisation. Leaders of the group had demanded to meet with President Muhammadu Buhari over their grievances but he directed them to Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo.

In a statement by Baraje, the faction said consultations had been going on and the position of the group would be made known soon.

“We will make our positions known to Nigerians in the first week of July. By then, we would have concluded our consultations and come up with our position on all the things we stood for which are not for personal gains but rather in the general interest of the downtrodden masses,” the statement read.

“Members of the group have been meeting regularly but the time is now ripe to make our position known to all well-meaning Nigerians.

“The corporate interest of the citizens of this country and a united Nigeria where no man is oppressed is paramount and very dear to our hearts, that is what we stand for and that is our goal.”

There were reports that the bloc would pull out of the ruling party at the convention of the APC but that never happened, though Baraje had warned that the presence of nPDP members at the convention did not mean that the issues had been resolved.

“The fact that we were able to attend the APC convention and the convention is going on well, is not an interpretation that the suffering of the masses had been alleviated and is not an answer that the security in the country which has been seriously jeopardised is being addressed,” Baraje had said in a statement.

Senate President Bukola Saraki; Yakubu Dogara, speaker of the house of representatives; and Aminu Tambuwal, governor of Sokoto, are among members of the group.