The Tanimu Turaki camp of the Peoples Democratic (PDP) on Thursday allayed the fears of candidates sponsored by it on whether or not they will be able to contest the 2027 general elections, insisting that they will be the ones that will fly the party flag in National and state elections.
Speaking at a stakeholders meeting in Abuja, Turaki said emphatically that nobody will be able to kill the PDP, while assuring that the party was on course and will participate in the elections.
He said, ‘I want to say, without fear of contradiction, that PDP, your party is on course. The essence of every political party is to legitimately capture power in a given polity. You cannot capture power unless you are on the ballot. I want to tell you that PDP shall be on the ballot for all rounds of the 2027 elections, from the presidential down to the states houses of assembly election PDP, this PDP shall be on the ballot’.
He commended those who have kept fate with the group for their tenacity, for your loyalty, for your conviction, for your belief in democracy, and for your resoluteness in working towards ensuring that democracy that believes in a multi-party system survives in our country.
Turaki said ‘there comes a time in the life of a human being when challenges, ups and downs become the order of the day. But as the saying goes, when the going gets tough, it’s only the tough that ultimately gets going.
‘For us in PDP, we’ve seen all seasons. We’ve seen the good times. We’ve also seen the bad times. We’ve seen days of prosperity, just as we’ve also seen days of adversity. We’ve seen successes, and we’ve seen challenges. For us, the kind of challenge that the People’s Democratic Party is facing today is not something that is new to us.
‘People may recall a time in the past when attempts were made by some charlatans to take the leadership of our party and then give it in the hands of some impostors, and when the party and the party leadership rose in unison and said, ‘We will not allow anybody to run away with our party’, a caretaker committee was set up under the leadership of His Excellency Senator Ahmed Mohamed Makarfi.
‘Those who were there and those who are conversant with what happened during that period of serious challenge, will appreciate that what we are now witnessing in our party is even a child’s play. By the special grace of God, we shall overcome. We will overcome. Indeed, we are overcoming.
‘Today we are witnessing in Nigeria, a time that is different from what we all are used to seeing. There are a lot of tension. There are a lot of crises. There are a lot of upheavals in the domain of most of the opposition political parties. It’s regrettable, indeed very sad and unfortunate, that when you begin to trace the genesis of those crises, that they will take you back to the footsteps of the party in government.
‘We used to think that more than any other person, that people in government, people who are on the surgeon of leadership, should prefer peace to reign than crisis in their domain. But for us in PDP, while other political parties are having existential threat, while their existence is threatened and their lives is shaking, nobody, and I dare say, nobody can kill the PDP.
‘PDP will continue to live. There may be challenges here and there regarding the leadership of our party. Again, for us in PDP, this is nothing new. We will overcome. We shall overcome. We are overcoming.
He said the party intend to discuss the judgement of the Federal High Court on the suit instituted by its Board of Trustees against the Independent National Electoral Commission on the leadership of the party and ‘agree on where we need to get to, for the purpose of taking our people and our nation out of the woods, and then we will maybe when we get into the private session, discuss exhaustively what our strategies would be’.
Former Niger state Governor, Babandiga Aliyu regretted that the crisis rocking the party came from within the party, regretting that those he called fugitives and nomadic politicians have been using the party for their own selfish.
He said however that those who thought they could kill PDP by running away to another party, are the ones who suffering more, and don’t even know what is there on the ground for them.
He said, ‘It is unfortunate that people are not patient enough. It is unfortunate that some people try to play god by taking decisions that really belongs to God. We have seen many of them jumping from one party to the other, for every election that has been conducted, but they forgot the success is not only in their effort.
‘Success is also in the way your heart functions, because our creator judges you by what is in your heart, not what is in your pocket or what is in your mouth. So, if you have clean heart, He knows it, and He will reward you at the end of the day. Believe me, we will be rewarded, and we will be surprised by our creator on the way and manner He is going to reward those of us who have stayed tenaciously to ensure that there is justice in our country.
‘Whatever is happening now, let us see it as a temporary way of making people understand that we messed up as we were coming along. If I will borrow from our creator, whatever you do, you will reap it, you will get it back. We will get yourselves back. You will get our party back, and we will succeed in the final analysis. We want people to be alive to see when we succeed. We will not laugh at them, but at least they will also learn some lessons as we go along.
‘You might think you are cheating me if you collect bribe to get me down. For you, you think you have made something, but believe me, you will pay both here and in the in the hereafter. So please let us continue patiently, and let us try to continue to at least organize properly.’