Atiku rejoins PDP, says ‘I have returned home’

FORMER vice president, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has announced his formal return to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Atiku made the announcement via Facebook Live on Sunday.

His media office, in a statement on Sunday, said the decision to return to the PDP followed consultations the former vice president had with party leaders and stakeholders from across the country.

The media office gave a transcript of the announcement on Facebook as follows: “Hello, my name is Atiku Abubakar.

“I am speaking to you today on Facebook Live as I want to reach as many of our young people as possible, as I have an important announcement to make about the future of Nigeria.

“As it is you, our youths, who represent the future of our nation.

“I have found in my travels across the country that whenever I get into conversations with young people, their number one concern is whether they will be able to get a job, for without a job they have no means of sustaining themselves or begin a family.

“And without the security of a job we cannot have security in our country. So without jobs there is no future for you or for Nigeria.

“And I also know as a parent that the older generation is also concerned about jobs for their children and, too often today, for themselves as well.

“Creating jobs is something I know about as I have created over 50,000 direct jobs and 250,000 indirect jobs in my own state of Adamawa.

“And I also know how the government can help create the right environment for businesses to create jobs.  When I was vice president in 1999 I was responsible for liberalising the telecoms sector which enabled us to increase the number of people who could access a phone from less than one million then to over 100 million today.

“This transformation resulted in the creation of hundreds of thousands of new jobs from the top-up card vendors you see on every street corner to the many new businesses that fed off the mobile phone revolution.

“Some of you may know that I was elected vice president under the banner of the PDP, which is the political party I had helped to found some 10 years before.

“And some of you may also know that I left the PDP four years ago when I believed it was no longer aligned to the principles of equity, democracy and social justice upon which we had founded it.

“I joined the APC as I had hoped it would be the new force that would help improve life for our people and I was excited about the party’s manifesto to create three million new jobs a year.

“The result has not been the change people had been promised or voted for, as in the last two years, almost three million Nigerians have lost their jobs.

“And today, with a record 25 per cent of people aged 18 to 25 unemployed, I can see how difficult it is for our youths to find a job.

“The key to creating jobs is a strong economy and that is what we are currently lacking. So today I want to let you know that I am returning home to the PDP as the issues that led me to leave it have now been resolved and it is clear that the APC has let the Nigerian people, and especially our young people, down.

“But rather than giving a long political speech on this matter, I thought it would be more helpful to invite you to ask me questions and share with you my answers.”

Welcoming him back home, the PDP, in its reaction by the party’s national publicity secretary, Dayo Adeyeye, in Abuja, said “our doors are opened wide for all our party members who were deceived into joining the APC in 2014 to return home.

Reacting to his formal declaration for PDP, however, the APC, in a telephone interview with its national publicity secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, said the party was no longer interested in Atiku’s political moves.

“There is no reaction, he can join any party he likes. It is no longer our business what party he joins!

“He is no longer in our party. So, any party he joins, it isn’t our business.”

National vice chairman, South-South, Honourable Hillard Etta, said the APC was not surprised over Atiku’s return to PDP.

“No surprise at all. He wants to be president, where else could he have gone? But we wish him well in his future endeavours,” he said.