The anti-Tinubu coalition led by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has expressed indifference to Wednesday’s decision of the Delta state Governor, Sheriff Oborevwori, to ditch the opposition Peoples Democratic Party PDP for the ruling All Progressives Congress APC.

Coalition spokesman, Salihu Moh. Lukman said the move was not unexpected and that some of the PDP governors are still being expected in the APC.


He said; “First, I think anybody who will say this is not unexpected, will only be deceiving himself. The signals have been there, that some governors were going to decamp. It is not just one but some governors.

“You also know the situation in PDP. The party is clearly a shadow of its own self. Although we acknowledge there are people, there are leaders in PDP who are optimistic they can rescue the party. But if you remember, when the governors issued a statement against the coalition, what was our response? Our response was that many of them were working for Asiwaju, and shortly after that, you saw the statement from Akwa Ibom, and of course the Delta governor. It is not only him, if you check the comments, there are many more who are being expected. And on two sides, on the side of people who genuinely worry for the country, are expressing fear about a one-party state.


“And on the side of the government and APC, they are jubilating. All that one can say is that look, the beauty of democracy is about competition. The whole initiative to begin to negotiate the coalition is to ensure that in 2027, Nigerians are presented with options.

“We have gone far, and what has happened in terms of some governors and some leaders moving into APC is not going to distract us at all. Not long from now, the full detail of the coalition will be unveiled to Nigerians. And the structure and the strategy in terms of how the election will be contested will be clarified”.

Lukman said leaders of the PDP should take this as an advantage and use it to for introspection and work towards sanitizing the country and rescuing it in a way that it will correct its own mistakes.

“What are those old mistakes? The old mistake is that anything that will continue with the culture of imposition of candidates, and godfatherism. That is what PDP has produced in this country.

“We are just hoping that leaders of PDP who genuinely are working to rescue the party are thinking in the direction that rescuing the party should mean rebuilding the party so that the culture of imposition is a thing of the past in PDP. If that happens, we will regard the new PDP that will be born as a partner in the project of the coalition to rescue the country.


“I can tell you for certain, we are not going to produce a new political structure that will be blind or ignorant of the character of politicians. Anybody coming in will be related to, based on their own past trajectory. So, if truly we want to rescue the country, we are not talking of rescuing the country as just defeating Asiwaju and APC.


“We want to correct all the mistakes and shortcomings from the Buhari administration to the Asiwaju administration. And we want to restore the aspiration of Nigerians to produce a stronger and greater country. Produce leaders that they will be proud of.


That is what the coalition is all about. And if anybody sees it differently, we are going to correct all of that”, he added