As the race for the 2023 presidency gains momentum, members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Katsina State have called on the national chairman of the party, Prince Uche Secondus, to zone its presidential ticket to the North-central region.
The PDP members, under the auspices of Sarakiyya 2023, said in the spirit of fairness, the leadership of the main opposition party under Secondus should support the North-central geopolitical zone to produce the next president of the country.
National Coordinator of Sarakiyya 2023, Abubakar Nuhu, made the appeal on Saturday in Katsina, the state capital, while inaugurating the state, zonal, and local government executives of the movement. Nuhu said the zone had the voting strength to produce President Muhammadu Buhari’s successor.
The position of Sarakiyya 2023 comes at a time governors of southern states are insisting that the south be allowed to produce the president of the country in 2023.
Nuhu said, “Nobody is safe in Nigeria, so we need a presidential candidate that can secure Nigeria for the future of the youths and that candidate is Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki. If you consider the votes that PDP got in the 2019 election, it is clearly shown that North-central is owned by PDP.
“The votes were more than two point something million in the North-central. But where the PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, came from in 2019, we only had 800,000. That shows that if PDP decides to move the presidential candidate to North-central, they can win the election.”
Nuhu declared that PDP members in Katsina State under the Sarakiyya movement had endorsed the former senate president for the 2023 presidential race under the PDP umbrella. He said many Nigerians believed it was time for the former Kwara State governor to lead the country.
The Sarakiyya leader stated, “We have endorsed him to be our presidential flag bearer under the platform of our great party, PDP. It was due to the effort of Dr Abubakar Bukola Saraki that the bill of not too young to run was brought into the floor of the senate and later the bill was signed into law. That gave equal opportunities to Nigerian youths to contest for different political offices.”
Nuhu said he would join forces with like-minded Nigerians to ensure that Saraki becomes the country’s next president.
THISDAY
