Makarfi denies nursing presidential ticket

• Atiku’s resignation, a big blow to APC, says Okupe
• Insists PDP alone can’t defeat Buhari in 2019
• Bode George asks ex-members to return

The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Caretaker Committee Chairman, Senator Ahmed Makarfi, has said that allegation by some party’s chairmanship aspirants that he is nursing the presidential ticket of the party is baseless.

He said that those aspirants engaged in such blackmail because he did not meet their offer.Makarfi, who spoke while responding to the allegation that he and the committee members were favouring a South-South candidate to emerge at the PDP convention and to also pave way for his presidential ambition, said the work of the caretaker committee to deliver a credible convention for the party is a topmost priority.

According to him, those aspirants that were making allegations against him and the committee members have not been sincere to themselves.Makarfi also debunked the interview granted by Alhaji Abdullahi Jalo saying: “He has never been my spokesman and he is not my spokesman.

“How on Earth will somebody say what I am going to do in far away Gombe State. Everybody knows my spokesman. But again, it is also somebody facing disciplinary measure because of misdeeds in the party. So, we don’t know what actually influenced him making that interview or statement.”

Meanwhile, the Accord Party (AP) National Leader and former presidential spokesman, Dr. Doyin Okupe, has said that the defection of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar from All Progressives Congress (APC) is a big blow to the party.

He said that President Muhammadu Buhari could only be defeated through coalition of forces in 2019, insisting that the PDP cannot achieve the objective alone.

The former presidential aide said this in Ado-Ekiti at the weekend during the election and inauguration of the party’s state executive and the official adoption of its governorship candidate, Akogun Banjo Ojo, for the Ekiti State gubernatorial election.

Okupe, who described the AP as a veritable third force that is blowing like a whirlwind across the South-West and the country at large, said the party would win the 2018 governorship election in Ekiti State.

In another development, chieftain and national chairmanship candidate of the PDP, Chief Olabode George, has called on past party members to follow Atiku Abubakar’s footsteps and rejoin the PDP.
 
George, who spoke in Katsina at the weekend, said Atiku was all the while a tenant in the APC, and that it is good that he is coming back to his house.
 
He, however, said that the former vice president was yet to tell other PDP members why he returned to the party after his romance with the ruling APC.