Nigeria’s immediate former vice president Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has returned back to the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), a party he left due to political disagreement between him and the former president Olusegun Obasanjo.
Atiku’s media aide, Garba Shehu, said the former vice president and his supporters decided to rejoin the PDP following disagreements within Mega Summit Movement (MSM), a movement initiated by the opposition political figures to dislodge the PDP from power come 2011.
Beside Atiku’s involvement in the MSM, he is equally involved in another political alliance, the National Democratic Movement (NDM) which is mainly a northern political movement in the country where Atiku hails from.
His return to the PDP, however, was described by the head of secretariat of the National Democratic Movement (NDM) Alhaji Sule Hamma as the reunion of politicians with similar thinking and ideological inclination.
He said, “It is a normal realignment of political forces” signifying that people of similar mind set “will always flock together.”
Before his return, Atiku has been involved with General Muhammadu Buhari, Alhaji Attahiru Bafarawa, ex-Senator Bola Tinubu in the NDM to form a broad based political party to remove the PDP from power in 2011. Alhaji Sule said the move is good for Nigeria to move forward stressing that there is no ideological compatibility between Atiku and most of the political actors in the NDM.
Alhaji Sule insisted that the current political struggles eventually create groups that share the same thinking and allow each group to identify its opponent, adding that he was not surprised over Atiku’s decision to abandon the group.
However, the Conference of Nigeria Political Parties (CNPP), an umbrella body of opposition political parties in the country said the return of former vice president Atiku Abubakar to the Peoples Democratic Party is a blow to opposition which poses a threat to their plans to wrestle power from the ruling party.
CNPP’s National Chairman Alhaji Balarabe Musa said dethroning PDP would now be a very herculean task, adding that Atiku’s return to PDP is a “great loss” to politicians who want to bring meaningful democratic change in the country in 2011.
The CNPP chairman however said Atiku’s reunion with the PDP did not take them by surprise, because the former VP and his supporters only left the PDP in 2007 due to disagreement with Chief Olusegun Obasanjo.