Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, has promised to give restructuring the Nigerian federation the attention it deserves if elected President.
Atiku made the commitment while addressing party supporters at the party’s presidential rally in Ibadan, on Thursday.
The candidate explained that he was not only aware but conscious of the importance of devolving powers to states in order to speed up development.
According to him, an Atiku-Okowa administration will also ensure adequate funding for education to end the regime of incessant strikes especially in Universities.
He said, “Now, this region of the Southwest, has been known to agitate over restructuring. By restructuring, we mean giving more powers or giving more autonomy and money to the states.
“Now, it is one of the five pillars of our program to make sure we implement restructuring, meaning that we give you more resources and more powers so that you can develop your respective zones and states as well as your local government. This is a commitment.
“Again, we are committed to making sure that there are no more strikes in our university, meaning we will fund our universities and pay our teachers on time so that we don’t have any disruptions to our academic activities.
“Now, Southwest is known to be also a business center. That’s why in our economic program, we are committed to making sure that the industrialization of the Southwest is achieved in support with the federal government. This is a commitment. “
Atiku reiterated his commitment to implementing his five point agenda if given the mandate.
He said, “There are five major commitments we made to the people of this country, the Unity, we must make sure, must be inclusive. Every part of this country will be represented in our government, not like what the APC command is doing.
“We also commit to making sure that we control and always take control of your security situation, so that there is law and order in every part of this country. These are our commitments.
“It is not like the commitments of the APC in the last seven to eight years, everything they have committed, they have failed to implement.
“Therefore, if you are living witnesses, this is an opportunity for you to vote out APC. Therefore, I want to appeal to you the people of Oyo state to support PDP all the way from top to bottom and together we can march into victory and progress for our great country.
Earlier in his remarks, the National Chairman of the PDP, Dr. Iyorchia Ayu, said, “Eight years ago, some people came with lies were propaganda and deceived you, that they are going to give you a change.
“They brought something called change. Everyone of you here is indebted because every day they are borrowing.
“As a party in government, we made life better for every Nigerian. We were working on it until you were deceived.
“After the election, there will be no APC in Nigeria. They will disappear from the surface of the Nigeria air and back to the small parties that they were.”
He also appealed to aggrieved party members to return to the fold because the PDP was poised to return to power at the Centre.
Ayu said, “We shall win at every level, PDP will sweep this country, all our state House of Assembly, our National Assembly members, our governors, and of course, we are going back to the villa. We shall be inaugurating the president this year by the grace of God.
“Nigerians will know that PDP is back. We are not just back, we are back to work for you, to make sure that we improve your roads, we improve education because the other party didn’t even care when our children were at home for one year.”
