A
member, Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief
Ebenezer Babatope, has said that President Goodluck Jonathan will not
run for the presidency in 2019.
He explained that the party would shop
for a strong Hausa/Fulani candidate to run against the President-elect,
Muhammadu Buhari, in 2019.
Babatope, who is also a member of the party’s elders’ caucus, spoke with our correspondent on Victoria Island, on Wednesday.
He described the outgoing President as a
leader, who had done his best in uplifting the nation’s democracy,
adding that Nigeria would forever remember Jonathan as a committed
leader who kept the nation as one despite several challenges.
He said he was sure that the President
would not seek to contest the 2019 presidential election although “the
people of the South-South have the right to present a candidate for the
election, I’m sure the President will not contest; He will lead us to
against the All Progressives Congress.”
He said, “The President has set himself
apart as a great Nigerian leader, who is committed to seeing Nigeria
blossom into a great democracy. He has laid a solid foundation for the
nation’s democracy and he would forever be remembered.”
“The President will not contest the 2019
presidential election. The PDP will look for a strong Hausa/Fulani
presidential candidate to contest against Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari
(retd.).
“We have a strong presence in the
South-South, South-East and we have two governors in the South-West. We
are going to slug it out together in the North in 2019. We are going to
flush out the APC in 2019 because we are going to correct our mistakes
and take back the central government.”
The former Minister of Transport said
PDP’s National Executive Council, the BoT and Elders’ Caucus would meet
soon in Abuja to assess the outcome of the general elections.
He said, “We are going to restructure our
party. The National Chairman of the party, Alhaji Adamu Mu’azu, will
convene a meeting in two weeks’ time when we will objectively discuss
the last elections.
“Apart from the grand conspiracy against
our party by the powers that be in the elections, we are going to tackle
the problem of imposition, which was a great area of mistake on our
side. Crises were recorded across the states over imposition. We are
going to guard against this. The APC will, naturally, make its own
mistakes and we will capitalise on these.
“It is given in politics that mistakes
would occur among the ruling party. We will all see when this begins to
happen. We are watching and waiting.”
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