The Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party said in Abuja on Tuesday it had commenced the search for who would fly the party’s presidential flag in 2019.
The BoT Chairman, Walid Jibrin, said this while receiving members of a PDP group, Ward-2-Ward, at the party’s Presidential Campaign Office, which is also known as the Legacy House.
The office is located at the Maitama District of Abuja.
The PDP has zoned its presidential candidate slot to the northern region.
Jibrin also said that former governors and lawmakers who left the PDP in the build up to the 2015 general elections would soon return to the former ruling party.
While he described the return of former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar to the PDP as a good omen for the party, the BoT chairman added that the likes of the Senate President, Bukola Saraki; a former governor of Kano State, Musa Kwankwaso; Sokoto State Governor, Waziri Tambuwal, and other lawmakers would soon return to the party.
He said that the BoT had also set up a nine-member committee headed by a former Senate President, David Mark, to reconcile members of the board over the outcome of the December 9 national convention of the party.
Jibrin insisted that the threat by those behind the formation of a faction of the party known as the Fresh PDP was feeble.
On the effort of the North to produce the party’s presidential candidate, Jibrin said, “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 give you a very capable president, not a no-do-well president but a good and 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 the PDP.
“The bad omen we have experienced in the past through artificial tsunami will not repeat itself. Those who were moved by that tsunami have already gone.”
Urging Saraki and other members of the All Progressives Congress members who defected in 2014 to return to the PDP, Jibrin said, “The coming of Atiku back to this party, whether we like it or not, is a good omen for the party.
“When Atiku left the APC, he did it peacefully unlike some others, when they left our party, they tore our party card. He didn’t do that and that was why I congratulate the APC because Atiku left their party without tearing their card.
“…We are therefore calling on the Senate President Saraki, Kwankwaso and all our former legislators who have left this party to come back quickly.”
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