I have not defected from PDP, says Atiku

Atiku Abubakar

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has said that he is still in the Peoples Democratic Party, urging his followers to disregard a rumor that he has defected to another party.

Atiku, who defected from PDP to the All Progressives Congress in 2014, but returned to the PDP early this year, asked his supporters to ignore the rumour.

A statement from his campaign office in Abuja on Sunday said the defection rumour was not true.

The defection rumour had claimed that Atiku had picked a former Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, Prof. Charles Soludo, as his running mate on the ticket of the All Progressives Grand Alliance.

But the Sunday statement described the report as “a malicious attempt to confuse the public” about the aspiration of Atiku ahead of the forthcoming presidential primaries election of the PDP.

It said, “For avoidance of any doubts, Atiku remains the front-line aspirant for the presidential ticket of the PDP.

“In the past two months, Atiku Abubakar has moved across states in the country, consulting with stakeholders of the PDP and explaining to them his agenda as encapsulated in the acronym JOBS (Jobs, Opportunity, Being united and Security) for Nigeria.

“The nationwide consultations continue this week with visits to the South West, North West and North Central zones of the country.

“Atiku’s passion and commitment to winning the PDP primaries is without any compromise and to assume that he will abandon the hard work he has done with the positive results he is getting from the stakeholders of the party is, to say the least, preposterous and unthinkable.

“The campaign calls on supporters of Atiku to remain steadfast and see the contrived news of defection as an an attempt to distract it from the set task of winning the PDP ticket and the 2019 presidential election by the grace of God.”