Atiku Abubakar, the Presidential Candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Nigeria’s main opposition party, has called on members of the PDP to focus on rebuilding the party ahead of the 2023 Presidency.
YaahooJournalist reports that Atiku, a former Nigerian Vice President, made this demand on the micro-blogging site, Twitter, on Saturday, January 4.
The former Presidential candidate said rather than playing politics, PDP’s priority should be on how to strengthen its party for any challenges that may await them ahead of the 2023 elections.
His words: “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.”
Meanwhile, Atiku’s statement is coming months after he lost the 2019 Presidential election to President Muhammadu Buhari who polled a total of 15,191,847 votes against the 11,262,978 votes he (Atiku) garnered.
Displeased with the election results, Atiku approached the court to challenge Buhari’s victory, but his suit was dismissed by both the Presidential Election Tribunal and the Supreme Court of Nigeria.
The Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Tanko Mohammed, in his judgment said, “We have examined all the briefs and exhibits for over two weeks.
“And we agreed that there is no merit in this appeal. The appeal is dismissed. Reasons to be given on a date to be announced.”
Reacting to the ruling, Atiku had said that, “The Nigerian judiciary, just like every estate of our realm, has been sabotaged and undermined by an overreaching and dictatorial cabal, who have undone almost all the democratic progress the Peoples Democratic Party and its administrations nurtured for sixteen years, up until 2015,” he had said in October 2019.