Nigeria is divided, I’ll reunite it, says Atiku
Former Vice President and Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, presidential aspirant Atiku Abubakar has said that Nigeria was in disunity because of how unfair the All Progressives Congress (APC) government has been treating all parts of the country.
He claimed that, in fact, the civil war era was not as disunited as now, under President Muhammadu Buhari’s government.
Atiku, said this while speaking to party’s delegates on Saturday in Abeokuta, Ogun State capital, in preparation for the presidential primaries.
The Waziri of Adamawa acknowledged that as long as the country is not united, one cannot govern even his own home, not to talk of the entire country.
He however vowed to work on the unity of the country by respecting everyone’s sense of belonging, address insecurity and foster economic development.
Atiku said, “We have never witnessed the kind of disunity we have today in this country, even during the civil war… and why do we have disunity? It is because the APC government has not been fair to all parts of this country.
“I promise to unify this country. I promise to give a sense of belonging to every part of this country. We have done it before in 1999 when we came on board, there was a lot of disunity but it was not as bad as this. But, the first thing we did was to make sure we form a government of national unity and that gave us the calmness in the unity we needed to govern.
“As long as the country is not united, as long as there is no peace you cannot govern it even in your home not to talk of a complex country like Nigeria which is multi ethnic and multi religious. So, I promise to give every part of this country a sense of belonging , that was why I said I was going to restore unity.
“Some few days ago, a governor declared to run for President and he was talking about local government autonomy and currently in his state, he is not giving that autonomy to the local government, so you can see the hypocrisy from some of our leaders that is why I said, constitutionally we are going to initiate reforms which will give states and local governments more powers and more resources to deal with issues that are essentially states and local government issues.
“If you vote for me, I promise I will not fail you and I will not fail Nigeria.”
Among those who accompanied the former vice president were a PDP chieftain, Raymond Dokpesi, Senator Dino Melaye, and a host of others.
