Former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal, has said that Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi and other politicians involved in coalition talks are not considering the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as a platform.
Speaking on Arise Television programme, Morning Show, Lawal said nobody has ever bothered about adopting PDP as the platform for the coalition.
According to Lawal, Atiku is involved in all the steps of the meetings and negotiation for the coalition. He said: First of all, regarding Atiku, I’m not his spokesman. But my stand with Atiku is that, you know, we are from the same state.
“And he’s an elder statesman in my state in particular. He was a former vice president, an eminent politician. And so to that extent, I have great respect for him as a politician, as an elder from my state. As to his political ambition, he’s entitled to it, like every Nigerian that is entitled to it. It is not for me to decide on which platform Atiku will contest or if he will contest at all.
“It’s for him and his inner circle to decide. Be that as it may, I can confirm that in most of the political meetings I’ve attended with regards to meager or the new political platform, I’ve run into Atiku Abubakar several. He’s been attending. Even on Tuesday, May 20, I was at one of such meetings, and he was there.
“So he has been an active participant in the need for opposition political parties to move into one platform to form one strong opposition party. Whether he will contest on that platform or not is not the issue. Now, the way about this is we have a technical committee of experts, experienced experts, who analyze all the possible political parties we could adapt and move in and strengthen it and upgrade it, make it more suitable for competitive elections.
“That’s our main goal. And Atiku has presented himself at all such meetings, and my reading of him is that he’s committed to this cause. In fact, he’s one of the most committed to this cause. This I can tell you about Atiku. Now, as to the coalition itself, it is mostly driven by prominent politicians who agree to come together to form this coalition.
“It is not focused on which political party should form the merger. First, our options are this. Do we get another party that we could move into, modify it, upgrade it, and strengthen it for elections, or do we register a new political party? We have technical committees of experts looking into both of this.
“And I am sure, as we speak, we are getting to the end of the process, and I think we’ll soon announce a party that we’ll move into, or maybe we’ll register a new party. We are getting to the end of that. Nigerians are anxious about this. Every time we go out, people ask, what of platform, what of platform? Since we are here to serve the people, we are speeding up the process to reduce the tension among our supporters.
“But I can tell you, in all the analysis I’ve seen so far, nobody has ever bothered about let’s adopt PDP as the platform. We all agree that PDP has an incurable virus. No antibiotic can cure what is ailing PDP, and we don’t want to go into a house that we cannot modify, that is not willing to change. So PDP is not in that list.”