LAGOS JANUARY 10TH (URHOBOTODAY)-Ahead of the 2019 general elections, Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Board of Trustees (BoT), Senator Walid Jibrin has said the party is shopping for a credible northern candidate to fly its flag in the presidential election.
The BoT chairman stated this when a pressure group within the party, PDP Ward to Ward, visited the board in Abuja, yesterday.
The party had earlier zoned its presidential ticket for the 2019 election to the North.
Jibrin said the party is collaborating with PDP leaders from the North, to get an acceptable presidential candidate from the region, who can defeat the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2019.
“All of us as a party, we agreed that the president of Nigeria should come from the North.
“I enjoin you to support the North to bring and give you a very capable president, a good qualitative president.
“We are all doing what we can in the North, with all the leaders, to identify who is the best candidate to rule this country; the best person that will take away power from the ruling party because 2019 is our own, 2019 is for PDP.”
The BoT chairman expressed delight with the recent return of former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar to the opposition party. He described it as a good move.
Jibrin called on Senate President, Bukola Saraki, former Kano State governor, Senator Rabiu Musa Kwakwanso and former governors and federal lawmakers, who were once in the PDP, but currently in the APC, to return to the opposition party.
Senator Jibrin said the BoT has set up a committee led by former Senate President, David Mark, to go round board members aggrieved with the outcome of the party’s last convention.
“We are also expecting a big return of some of our former governors, our National Assembly members and very renowned party followers. And, when this is done, which will be done very quickly, then, the party will now come to its stable stand. We should encourage anybody who has left us to come back and reunite with us. When they come back, then, we shall all come together and the issue of leadership, we shall then look at it, who wants to become the president of Nigeria will now depend on all of us. We all will decide who will be the president of Nigeria and we have set the machinery already.”
Speaking on attempts by some aggreived members of the party to set up a paralell structure, Jibrin said the PDP is working round the clock to ensure that the plan does not materialise.