Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and former vice president Atiku Abubakar yesterday said he is confident that the PDP will bounce back to give Nigerians a responsive government.
He added that the PDP took a leading role in the deconstruction of military rule in Nigeria, stressing that the peculiarities of contemporary experiences within Nigeria and other African countries demand that the party should rise to the occasion.
He spoke while congratulating his party for growing up to 25 years and impacting positively on Nigeria’s socio-economic and political development.
PDP, the ruling party between 1999 and 2015, has seen its political fortunes and dominance dwindle since it lost the 2019 and 2023 presidential elections to the incumbent All Progressives Congress (APC).
While it lost dominance in the North after the 2015 polls, it suffered major setbacks in the South East and South in subsequent elections.
Atiku, who was the presidential candidate of the party in 2019 and 2023, is currently challenging the outcome of the last election in court just like he did but lost in 2019.
However, Atiku, in a press release signed by his media office to mark PDP’s 25th anniversary, said: “The PDP is the progenitor of our contemporary democracy, and therefore, the party shall ensure that democracy does not only survive in Nigeria, but that the country thrives through it.”
“Being one of the founding fathers of our great party, I take great pride in having participated in the process of nurturing the party from infancy to a deliberate agency of socio-political and economic development in Nigeria.
“In the 16 years that the PDP was at the helm of affairs in our country, it offered quality leadership through various administrations and the achievements recorded in those 16 years have remained the benchmark for positive growth in our economy and other critical areas of our national life
“Of course, the PDP took leading role in the deconstruction of military rule in Nigeria, and the peculiarities of our contemporary experiences both within Nigeria and other countries in Africa demand that the PDP should, once again, rise to the occasion in cancelling the economic hardship and other structural deficiencies that directly bear negatively on our people in the past nearly eight and half years.
“I have every confidence that the PDP will bounce back to give Nigerians a responsive government.”