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Enioluwa Adeniyi
Guest
The Director General of Heritage Centre, Katchi Ononuju, has publicly dismissed the prospects of a political merger between the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, and Peter Obi of the Labour Party.
In a recent interview with the Daily Post, the PDP chieftain clarified the current alliance dynamics within Nigeria’s opposition parties.
Ononuju highlighted that while there have been widespread speculations about potential coalitions, the only substantive expression of interest has come from Rabiu Kwankwaso, the Presidential candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), who is keen on collaborating with Peter Obi.
This revelation comes amid swirling rumors and public expectations of a broader opposition alliance to challenge the ruling party in upcoming electoral contests.
Ononuju said, “Kwankwaso has talked about his willingness to work with Peter Obi that follows from the election, but he was threatened by some people not to work with Obi. There is no talk of a merger between any of the parties; the only merger possible from what we have seen is Kwankwaso talking of his willingness to work with Obi. There are no other talks of a merger; the PDP can’t talk about a merger because of its crisis, it has to stand on its own before it can talk about a merger. I can also say the same thing for the Labour Party. The only one I know without an issue is the Obidient movement, which is not a political party but a movement. There are no merger talks but hints to cohabitate and work with each other, which I know with Kwankwaso saying publicly that he would work with Obi.”
Ononuju said nobody, including Kwankwaso or Obi, will take Atiku seriously due to his inordinate ambition.
He added, “Because of Atiku’s inordinate ambition, if he doesn’t get off his high horse, nobody will take him seriously, not Kwankwaso, neither will Obi. Secondly, Atiku is in a party that is currently in crisis, so there is nothing like a merger with such issues. Obi visited Atiku some time ago and Atiku spoke about working together, to which Peter said yes, but Atiku will not have anybody from the South step down for him. So the fact that in 2013, he said that the ‘sanctity of rotation is as sanctimonious as the quota system,’ quota system is the reason the South bent backward to allow the North’s inclusion – so if that’s the way to have the presidency and you don’t want to allow South inclusion, nobody will work with you – that’s why nobody may work with Atiku because he wants to be on top.
“If you formed an alliance with nPDP and birthed Buhari’s presidency, after eight years of Buhari’s presidency, why would you feel terrible having a Southerner rule? If you don’t have that mind of the North and South ruling, it’s not going to work. It was Atiku that paid money to the preachers in the mosques to start preaching that Muslims in the North should not vote for anybody from the East. That was why Wike got frightened and started his heritage denial acrobatics that ‘I’m not Igbo,’ thinking that they would get him in the North. What happened? He was rejected, and that’s why Wike has been spilling bad blood in trying to do the NWC the same way Atiku did to it. Once you use money to compromise our party’s NWC, you can bend their heads to do anything.”
The PDP chieftain dismissed the possibility of a merger if Atiku won’t step down for a younger candidate from the South.
He said, “So, there is nothing like a merger if Atiku will not step down for a younger person from the South, the reason the youth movement was formed was because Atiku refused, so if he refused and we now have what we have of the party breaking into several factions, the opposition is gone; so you blame Atiku for all that.
“There is no way they can allow him to benefit from the crisis which he has engineered. He is the cause of the splitting of the opposition; if he had respected the fact that the Southerners should go after Buhari’s eight years, I don’t think we would be where we are. We are where we are today in the country because of Atiku’s inordinate quest for the presidency after he had told everybody that it’s the turn of the North, and that was the reason for forming the nPDP.
“So, if nPDP succeeded in bringing Buhari into power for eight years, is that not enough for the North? Why is the Northerner still insisting on running and going to engineer such nonsense in the mosque?”
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