By Sunday Okobi
Former Governor of Jigawa State, Dr. Sule Lamido,
has taken his 2019 presidential ambition a step further by seeking the support
of party members to be the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) standard bearer.
The Director of Media to the former governor, Umar
Kyari, said in a statement on Monday that Lamido has written to members of the
PDP informing them of his decision to fly the party's flag in the next
presidential election.
According to Kyrai, Lamido in the letter addressed
to all PDP members across the country, said the party needs to reposition the
country by taking over power in 2019 and bring it back to its path of recovery.
The PDP stalwart, who opted to stay put in the
party while some others left for All Progressives Congress (APC), expressed concern that Nigeria has departed
from the dreams of its founding fathers.
He said: "Today, 57 years after the
independence of our dear country, can we in all sincerity claim to have
achieved the dream of our founding fathers? Where did we fail and from where
did we begin to fail? Nigeria with its natural endowment and human capacity
cannot be forgiven for being otherwise. We cannot even demonstrate our ability
and capacity to meet domestic, regional and global challenges which currently
seem to overwhelm us.
"The PDP will and must lead the country back to
a bright, progressive, and innovative future."
Lamido said the PDP must rekindle in Nigeria a new
hope, a nation of united people with a common and assured destiny.
"To the world, Nigeria must demonstrate our
confidence, tenacity in our ability and capability to address our domestic
regional and global challenges that confront us.
“It is against this background that I offer myself
to vie for the office of the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in
2019 if my party finds me worthy to fly its flag," The letter read.
Lamido noted that the PDP has enough talents to
salvage Nigeria from its current woes.
According to him, "I am no means claiming to
be the only capable material, any PDP member given the trust and support can
fly our flag, and I expect that many more aspirants will express the desire to
run. My hope and prayer is that at the end of all the process which I hope will
be open, fair, transparent and credible, is to give Nigeria in 2019 a candidate
who will lead the party and Nigeria. This is because there is no alternative to
PDP in 2019, it will be a defining moment in the Nigerian political evolution."
He said why the clamour for restructuring rages,
the most important aspect of addressing the Nigerian economy is by creating
prosperity that would make the debate less emotional and sentimental.
"Our imperfect union as a federation should
not be an excuse for our legendary failure which appears to have found vent in
the call for restructuring; a union of multi-ethnic multi-lingual and
multi-religious can certainly task the best of human capacities, but that is
precisely the challenge and how to work on it and build a nation of people of a
common destiny, and this is where the PDP must raise to the challenge.
“The starting point is where the PDP began in 1998
and critical to it is creating an open environment in which every Nigerian must
not only been seen to be, but must be an equal stakeholder and therefore
restoring trust and faith in our shared union, and this PDP was able to achieve
in its first four years," Lamido said.
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