TheCable

Nasir el-Rufai, governor of Kaduna state, says President Muhammadu Buhari will win the 2019 election without the new Peoples Democratic Party (nPDP).

He said this during an interview with state house correspondents on Tuesday.

El-Rufai said since 2003, Buhari had been winning elections in Kwara, Adamawa, Kano and Sokoto states where most of the nPDP members come from.

“What are we talking about? Who are these new PDP people that are threatening? This is Kwara, Kano, Sokoto, Adamawa, Rivers but I don’t think Amaechi is part of them. So let’s take these four states, go back to 2003 and check,” he said.

“Buhari then under ANPP won in all these four states. Go back to 2007, Buhari won in these four states. Even when Shekarau was running as a presidential candidate in 2011, Buhari defeated him in Kano. And, I have no doubt in my mind that even if the people threatening to leave, it will have absolutely no impact on the presidential election, the president will win Sokoto, Kwara and Adamawa easily.

“Kano is already in the bag, I mean if you saw the crowd that welcomed the president without the former governor KwanKwaso, Kano has always been the president’s base. To me that is not the issue, the issue is that they have written, they have expressed grievances, some of the grievances are legitimate and should be looked into.

“But to threaten to leave the party is neither here nor there. If they are honest with themselves they know that President Buhari will win those states with or without them. But if you have a grievance, we are a party and politics is a game of addition not subtraction, so we don’t want to loose anyone.

“So, I think those the letters were addressed to ought to study it and look into what is reasonably possible to accommodate them because politics as I said is a game of addition.”

In a letter signed by Olagunsoye Oyinlola and Kawu Baraje, leaders of the group, nPDP requested to meet the president within seven days.

Oyinlola resigned his membership of the APC less than 24 hours after the letter was submitted at the APC headquarters in Abuja and relinquished his position as chairman of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC).

Their letter had generated reactions across the country, with Uche Secondus, chairman of the PDP, saying his party would reach out to the aggrieved nPDP leaders.