Former vice president and Peoples Democratic Party presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar has pledged to unite the country if elected as the president.
This was stated by Atiku while addressing party delegates and members in Ogun State on Saturday in Abeokuta.
The presidential candidate, lamenting Nigerians’ disunity, blamed the ruling All Progressives Congress for the country’s disunity.
He claimed that President Major General Muhammadu Buhari’s (retired) administration is unfair to Nigerians.
He said, “We have never witnessed the kind of disunity we have today in this country, not even during the civil war. This disunity is because the APC government has not been fair to all parts of this country.
“I promise to unify this country and I promise to give a sense of belonging to every part of this country. We have done it before in 1999. When we came, there was a lot of disunity, but it was not as bad as this.
“The first thing we did was to make sure we formed a government of national unity and that gave us the calmness and the unity we needed to govern. As long as the country is not united, as long as there is no peace, you cannot govern it even in your home not to talk of a complex country like Nigeria which is multi-ethnic and multi-religious. So, I promise to give every part of this country a sense of belonging, that was why I said I was going to restore unity.”
Atiku also promised to resolve the challenges of insecurity, adding that he would ensure local government autonomy if elected president.
Reminding them of his earlier campaign promises, he said, “I said I was going to tackle security, after that I said once you tackle insecurity, it means there is peace and where there is peace then you can begin to implement your economic reforms which will create jobs, bring about national development and about the development of infrastructure.
“I also said I was going to tackle the issue of decentralisation or devolution of power to the states and local governments. Some few days ago, a governor declared to run for president and he was talking about local government autonomy and currently, in his state, he is not giving that autonomy to the local governments, so, you can see the hypocrisy in some of our leaders. That is why I said constitutionally, we are going to initiate reforms which will give states and local governments more powers and more resources to deal with issues that are essentially in the states and local areas.”