PDP TO LOBBY ATIKU ABUBAKAR WITH 2019 PRESIDENTIAL TICKET

The National Leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party is planning to set up a special committee that will convince those who defected from the former ruling party to the All Progressives Congress and other political parties to return to the fold, it was learnt.

The committee is different from the Reconciliation Committee being planned by the party. It will be recalled that the National Executive Committee of the party at its 74th meeting held at the party’s national secretariat in Abuja on Tuesday, had mandated its National Caretaker Committee to set up reconciliation and disciplinary committees.

It was learnt that the planned committee may be called “Contact and Inter-Party Committee”, and it may be headed by a former minister or a former Governor, whose identity is still being shrouded in secrecy.

Those being considered with the hope of asking them to return to their former political party are a former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar; a former Governor of Kano State, Alhaji Rabiu Kwankwaso; and two former Governors of Oyo State, Senator Rashidi Ladoja and Adebayo Alao-Akala.

The aim is to give the 2019 Presidential ticket to Atiku whom many of them feel has a better chance of leading the Party to victory .

It was also gathered that former Governor of Sokoto State, Alhaji Aliu Wamako; former Governor of Adamawa State, Admiral Murtala Nyako (retd.) and some other members of national and state assemblies that had left the PDP, had been penciled down for approach.