28th January, 2015
The National Chairman of Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM), Alhaji Bashir Ibrahim, said it had resolved to support the APC presidential candidate, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari at the February polls.
Ibrahim announced this during a news conference he jointly held with Buhari in Abuja on Tuesday.
According to Ibrahim, the party had registered close to six million members manually and online and resolved to deploy this voting strength for the best interest of Nigeria.
“We are here today to present to you the resolution of the National Executive Committee of PDM to support Buhari.
“The NEC of our party, at its meeting of January 22, noted that the party has no presidential candidate for the election of Feb. 14 and had accepted the need to support a candidate.
“The NEC of PDM unanimously resolved to support your candidature for president of Nigeria and calls on all members and supporters of PDM across Nigeria to vote for you in the presidential election’’, he said.
He said the party believed in the strategy of working separately and striking together. “As a General in the military, I am sure you are aware of the logic of this strategy.
“Therefore, we thought that the opposition should have alternative platform and that was why we decided to stay separately as an alternative platform in case something happens.
“Hopefully, nothing will happen between now and Feb. 14 when what the country expects will take place.”
“There should be at least 10 women who will go into matrimonial homes and bring out voters because history has shown that more women vote in our elections than men.
“Therefore, If every canvasser brings out 10 voters, with every ballot box with 500 voters, your votes should be at least 250.
“The other parties will share the remaining votes and that will automatically give you majority in every ballot box.”
Ibrahim said being president wasn’t enough as Buhari needed to have majority in the National and State Assemblies.
Responding, Buhari said “I am extremely pleased to receive you with such an articulated document from your party.
“This is an extremely pleasing day for me to get you on our side. It is a major achievement because I know your capacity to analyse situations and arrive at a credible conclusion.
Buhari revealed that the APC had tried to woo the PDM but the latter party had been silent on the matter. “We had tried to egg you earlier on through your senior colleague in the match, the Turaki of Adamawa.
“The deafening silence worried me to the extent that it was really a torture for a long time because he did not come back to tell me what you were thinking.
“Now that you have turned up, I am extremely happy because it is not a mean achievement,” he said.
He said Nigeria was a strong country that could withstand the kind of problems it had and the people were resilient to the amazement of other nationals.
“It is only a country like Nigeria that can survive and get out of this situation we are in. A lot of countries will just disappear either from the map or from the political equation of nation states.
“But Nigerians are so resilient to the extent that there are international personalities who could not understand Nigeria and why Nigeria still exists.
“There was a former UN Secretary General who said that if he retires, he will go to Nigeria because, according to him, no other country can go through what was happening to Nigeria and survive.”