May 07, (THEWILL) – Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has lamented that the disunity being witnessed by Nigerians under President Muhammad Buhari’s administration, was worse than that of the Nigerian civil war
The war was fought between July 6, 1966 to January 13, 1970.
Abubakar disclosed this on Saturday at the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) secretariat in Abeokuta, Ogun State, when he came to solicit the support of the party’s state delegates ahead its convention in May 29.
The former VP, who is aspiring to be president on the platform of PDP, said that Nigerians enjoyed peace and unity during the civil war than the All Progressive Congress (APC)-led government of Buhari.
He went down the history lane on how he as the VP to Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, restored the national unity of the country when they came into power in 1999, lamenting that Nigeria was in disunity because the current administration had not been fair to all parts of the country
Abubakar, who said that he remains the only aspirant to restore the unity of the country and make Nigeria better, if given the chance to be the next president, said that Nigerians had never had it worse like the Buhari’s government since it got her independence in 1960.
He, however, promised to decentralise powers to the state and local government administrations as well as tackle insecurity, if elected as the president of the country come 2023.
The ex-VP, while appealing to the delegates from Ogun State to vote for him as the candidate of PDP to contest the presidential election, implored the members of the party to shun disunity among themselves so that the party can win the state in the forthcoming election.
He said, “Let me remind you the five critical issues I mentioned in my declaration speech, we have never witnessed the kind of disunity we have today in this county, even during the civil war. The cause of this disunity is because the APC government has not been fair to all part of this country and I promise to unify this country and I promise to give all sense of belonging to every part of this country, we did it before in 1999.
“When we came, there was also a lot of disunity, but not as bad as this. The first thing we did was to make sure we reform a government of national unity and that gave us the calmness and the unity we needed to govern as long as the country is not united as long as there is no calm as long as there is no peace you cannot govern even in your own home no to talk of a complex country like Nigeria which is multi-ethnic and multi-religious so I promise to give every part of this country a sense of belonging that’s why I said I would restore unity.
“And I said I was going to tackle insecurity, when you tackle insecurity it means that there is peace, when there is peace, then you can start to implement your economic reforms which will create jobs and bring about development and the development about infrastructure.
“I also said I will tackle the issue of decentralisation – devolution of powers to the state and local government. We are going to initiate reforms that will give state and local government more powers and more resources to deal with issues that are essentially the state and local government issues.
“Now lets go to the issue before us, and that is the convention of the 28th and 29th of this month. I am here as one of the contestant, I am not new to you, you know me and I know you. You know what I can do because I had done it before. I will like to appeal for unity of this party and as long as you allow those people to manipulate you, you will continue to lose election and that is what they want. What is the point if you cannot win election in this state and better the lives of the people in this state”, he added.
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