2019 Elections: PDP Meets With R-APC, 30 Parties

The leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has held a meeting with leaders of over 30 political parties in Abuja.

The meeting, which took place at the Shehu Musa Yaradua Centre in the Federal Capital Territory, was convened less than 225 days to the general elections.

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Leaders of political parties in attendance include that of Former President Olusegun Obasanjo-backed African Democratic Congress (ADC), Social Democratic Party of Nigeria (SDP), National Conscience Party (NCP), Labour Party, and a host of other newly registered parties.

Some aggrieved members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) who broke out of the ruling party to form the Reformed APC were also present.

PDP National Chairman Uche Secondus, Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, R-APC Chairman Buba Galadima, and the lawmaker representing Kogi West, Senator Dino Melaye, were among the prominent politicians at the meeting.

The objective of the meeting is to form a grand alliance for a singular presidential candidate that will wrest power from the APC in the forthcoming presidential election.

The meeting held barely one day after the PDP claimed the APC was in the “throes of death” and that it was already suffering from pre-defeat trauma ahead of the 2019 elections.

In a statement by their National Publicity Secretary Kola Ologbondiyan on Sunday, the party described the ruling party as a “now shattered APC”, saying the party had become intensely nervous over the soaring popularity of the PDP and the surge of Nigerians into their fold as a repositioned and rebranded party.

“The APC is particularly unsettled by the huge successes recorded by the Liyel Imoke-led PDP Contact and Integration Committee, in seamlessly galvanizing alliances among stakeholders across other parties, including those returning from the overtly dysfunctional and derelict APC.

“The APC is further disconcerted by the spirit of accommodation, agreement and oneness of purpose that pervade the alliances among old, new and returning members of the PDP in our key structure across all the states of the federation, particularly in Sokoto, Kogi, Kwara and Kano states, where all new and returning members have been accorded very warm reception,” the PDP had claimed in the statement.