TheCable

Bamanga Tukur, former national chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), believes that his party would have emerged victorious in the general election if he had retained his position as the party’s chair.

Addressing journalists at his Abuja residence during a parley to commemorate his 80th birthday on Thursday, the elder statesman said so far, Buhari has performed well in office.

“My views are such that what I believe in is what I will preach. I want election and people say they want selection,” he said.

“If the majority or the strong people in the PDP did not believe in it, then the choice or the next thing for me to do was to leave. It is either I leave or they leave, but I did not want them to leave so I decided to leave.

“At that time, people said I was preaching internal democracy instead of imposition. So it will be difficult for me to sit down and allow them to leave.

“When I was there, I won elections and in the same vein, if I were there also I expect to win the election.”

Opposing the calls for dissolution of the national working committee of his party, Tukur advised the PDP to look for practical solutions to its internal crisis.

“You know to get the solution you have to look at the problem. The problem is that the party did not win election,” he said.

“Therefore, the focus should be what should be done what is going wrong? It’s not about sending somebody away. If you have malaria for instance, you look at the causes of malaria, maybe mosquitoes, then you try to eliminate the mosquitoes from the system.”

He also advised Nigerians to live in unity and shun sentiments.