Members of the All Progressives Congress, APC, party fromKano, Katsina and Kaduna states who have defected to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, have said that electing Muhammadu Buhari as Nigeria’s president in 2015 was a huge mistake.

Meanwhile, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) says Nigerians are eager to elect its Presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, as next President of the country because he has demonstrated that the essence of leadership lies in applying its powers and privileges for the good of others rather than self.

The party said, unlike President Buhari, whom it said has been rejected by Nigerians because he is “a self-centered, uncaring, divisive and incompetent leader, whose administration relishes in inflicting pain, sorrow and hardship on others,” that Atiku Abubakar, however, is generally accepted as a “unifier, a broad-minded leader, who is committed to the welfare and uplifting of living standard of the citizens.”

PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, stated the position of the party while receiving leaders of coalition of youth groups from Kano, Katsina and Kaduna states, who were at the PDP National Secretariat on Wednesday to register their decampment from the All Progressives Congress (APC) and their support for Atiku Abubakar ahead of the 2019 general elections.

Ologbondiyan said since the popular emergence of Atiku Abubakar as PDP Presidential candidate, the Buhari camp has continued to deplete in millions, adding that very soon President Buhari will find himself a “general without a troop, as Nigerians are no longer willing to blindly follow an incompetent leader, who thrives only on false promises, propaganda and procured endorsements.

Speaking earlier, the Coordinator of the coalition, Mallam Yusuf Maikano, described President Buhari’s election in 2015 as “a huge mistake for which the nation has already paid dearly”, adding that “there is no way the nation can survive if President Buhari is allowed to lead for another four years”.

Maikano bemoaned that the Buhari administration has brought untold hardship to Nigerians, particularly in the north, who he said, “feel hugely betrayed by President Buhari’s failure to fulfill his 2015 campaign promises and now angered by his current posturing with false performance claims and list of fresh promises, instead of apologizing for his flops.”

• Excerpted from a Vanguard report