Let’s Focus on Rebuilding PDP and Not Elections Before 2023 - Atiku

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has urged members of the Peoples Democratic Party to concentrate on strengthening the main opposition platform before the 2023 election cycle.

“Our preoccupation at this point in the @OfficialPDPNig should not focus on elections, but on rebuilding and strengthening our party for the challenges ahead of us,” Mr Abubakar, who was the party’s presidential candidate in 2019, said in a tweet this morning.

Mr Abubakar said rather than playing politics when campaign season was still at least 30 months away, resources should be channelled towards bolstering the PDP structure, which has weakened consistently since it lost the centre after 16 years in 2015.

Mr Abubakar challenged President Muhammadu Buhari at the February general election, but lost by a few million votes.

Over the past few days, he has faced rumours of taking desperate measures to get the PDP’s presidential ticket again in 2023, when Buhari would step down.

On Friday, media reports quoted Walid Jibrin, chairman of the PDP board of trustees, an advisory body of party elders, as alleging threats to his life because he declined to support an automatic ticket for Abubakar in 2023.