Former Military President and chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, General Ibrahim Babangida (IBB) on Sunday shocked many when he open declared support for the the Social Democratic Party (SDP) led by former Secretary to the State Government, Chief Olu Falae.
“If I hadn’t being too old, I would have loved to join the youths vanguard of your party. I have faith in the political party, for what it is and what it stand for. When I heard in the news that a party has come on board, the first thing that occurred to me was that the name sound familiar, so I made a decision that I will wait and see how it plays out, I was looking at how SDP will populate itself. And then the next pleasing thing that I heard was that it has people like Olu Falae, Professor Jerry Gana, Professor Adeniran.
“After that I said this party is real, because most of the names are names that I have known and I have worked with and for the sake of this country, so I said the party is smart to convinced all these gentlemen to come and join them. That is why I did not hesitate to give direction to those who came me to seek advice on which direction to go.”
Babangida pointed out that the vision he had for the country is the same vision that is shared by those driving the party, adding that, “the security and well being of Nigerians is very important and you have identified this in your programme so Nigerians must rally round you and support you to ensure that this is realizable”.
Babangida urged the younger generation and women to give their support to SDP as it is “populated by men of integrity, men who when they work, they work well, when they speak, they speak well.”
Babangida then advised the leadership of the party to make it manifestos public to Nigerians so that they can be hold accountable, “You must tell Nigerians what you intend to do for them because this is very important. The people must know if we vote SDP what do we expect so that it become politics of issues not politics of insult and name calling”.
In his address earlier, the National Chairman of the Party, Chief Olu Falae said that they were in the state to see General Babangida as part of the Party’s nationwide consultation to brief him on the activities of the party and to solicit for his support and wise counseling.
Falae said that SDP is a child of necessity, born out of the desire to rescue the country from the present decay in every sphere of lives, “When I was approached to accept all the Progressives who have been frustrated from different political parties to come together to form a formidable team to rescue Nigeria, I readily agreed because this country must be rescued from the present state of corruption and inpunity.”
Falae lamented that the situation of the nation is becoming worse and needs to be addressed adding that the Fulani herdsmen menace needs to be immediately addressed.
“Since this present government came on board, the Herdsmen seems to think that they now own Nigeria, and it is a lie, there arms must be taken away from them, their minds must be disabused and while doing that, provision must be made for them to be able to do their business legitimately so that the rest of us can also do our farming business as well because both agriculture and animal husbandry are good to the country economy.
“Nigeria as a country is passing through a terrible time, the present government talks about fighting corruption all the time but corruption today is worst than it was in the immediate past. “
He gave the assurance that when SDP takes over the government in 2019, they will reduce corruption to the nearest minimum, “Corruption can be fought if we the leaders genuinely embrace transparency not what we are seeing today.”
Newsclickng.com reports that the acclaimed winner of the 1993 Presidential elections, Chief MKO Abiola which was annulled by the then military president, Babangida contested on the platform of the SDP.
