ATIKU BEGINS MOBILISATION FOR 2015 PRESIDENTIAL BID

Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has begun mobilising people and resources to contest the 2015 presidential election.

Atiku, who will be taking a shot at the position for the third time since 2007, has set up a group to coordinate his campaign, especially in his North-east geopolitical zone, ahead of the next presidential election.

However, it is uncertain if he will be fighting for the ticket of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) like he did against President Goodluck Jonathan in the run up to the 2011 presidential election or whether he would re-enact his 2006 gambit for the post when he ran on the platform of Action Congress (AC) after former President Olusegun Obasanjo, his principal at the time, had muzzled him out of the PDP.

One of the groups coordinating his campaign, the North-east Transitional Assessment and Monitoring Forum, has started work in earnest in the zone.

According to the coordinator of the forum, Mallam Abubakar S. Noma, the group is now organising campaign teams in the six states of Bauchi, Gombe, Taraba, Adamawa, Yobe and Borno and will soon hold strategic meetings with others who will work in realising the former vice-president’s presidential bid.

Noma expressed optimism that the presidency will shift to the North come 2015, and particularly the North-east zone, adding that the former vice-president is the only formidable force that can stop Jonathan in the next general election.

Although the president has been evasive on whether or not he would seek re-election in 2015, contrary to his earlier assurance in January 2011 when he was on a visit to Ethiopia that he would only spend one term in office, there are strong indications that the president might throw his hat into the ring again.

Noma told reporters in Bauchi yesterday that the presidential campaign team in the state was being put together and would comprise representatives from each of the 20 local government areas, while a formal meeting to put political structures in place is scheduled for tomorrow.

He urged the people to support the Atiku presidential bid to salvage the North in particular and the country at large from the menace of want, hunger, disease and ignorance.

Source: Thisday