Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has promised that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will bounce back to deliver Nigerians from economic hardship.
The presidential candidate of the PDP in the 2023 presidential election spoke in a statement released by his Media Office in Abuja on Friday.
Abubakar is challenging the election of President Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal.
The tribunal has reserved judgment in separate petitions filed by Atiku, Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) and the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) to overturn the declaration of Tinubu as the winner of the presidential election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
PDP marked its 25th anniversary on Thursday, August 31 but the party, which ruled Nigeria for 16 consecutive years from 1999, when the country returned to civilian rule, has been out of power for eight years, from 2015.
Atiku said, “I have every confidence that the PDP will bounce back to give Nigerians a responsive government.
“PDP is the progenitor of our contemporary democracy and shall ensure that democracy did not only survive in Nigeria, but that the country thrives through it.
“Being one of the founding fathers of our great party, the PDP, I take great pride in having participated in the process of nurturing the party from infancy to a deliberate agency of socio-political and economic development in Nigeria.”
Atiku, who served as vice president to former President Olusegun Obasanjo from 1999 to 2003, described the achievements recorded by the party in the 16 years it was in power as the ‘benchmark’ for economic development in the country.
“In the 16 years that the PDP was at the helm of affairs in our country, the party offered quality leadership through various administrations and the achievements recorded in those 16 years have remained the benchmark for positive growth in our economy and other critical areas of our national life.
“Of course, the PDP took leading role in the deconstruction of military rule in Nigeria, and the peculiarities of our contemporary experiences both within Nigeria and other countries in Africa demand that the PDP should once again, rise to the occasion in cancelling the economic hardship and other structural deficiencies that directly bear negatively on our people in the past nearly eight and half years.”