Former Kaduna State governor, Malam Nasir El-Rufai has expressed his readiness to woo former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi and Rotimi Amaechi to join the Social Democratic Party (SDP) to form a vibrant opposition to the All Progressives Congress (APC) ahead of the 2027 general elections.
In an interview with the Hausa Service of the British Broadcasting Service (BBC) yesterday monitored by LEADERSHIP Sunday in Bauchi, El-Rufai said,
“My biggest wish and prayer is to see Atiku, Obi, Amaechi, and Aregbesola join SDP, so that we can form a powerful coalition of opposition leaders not necessarily to merge into one political party.”
El-Rufai, one of the founding fathers of APC, dumped the party for SDP last week after falling out with President Bola Tinubu’s government.
He was one of the arrowheads that firmly stood for Tinubu to emerge as APC presidential candidate in the 2023 elections. But barely two years later, the former Kaduna State governor left Tinubu over his exclusion from the current cabinet.
He openly criticised Tinubu’s policies for inflicting hardship on Nigerians.
Atiku and Obi are heavyweight opposition leaders who separately contested and lost the 2023 presidential election under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP) respectively to Tinubu.
El-Rufai said, “SDP is a vibrant platform. Let us come together so we can challenge the APC.”
He said although Tinubu deceived him, he still did not regret supporting him to become the president in 2023.
He denied defecting to SDP to contest for the presidency in 2027 but conceded that if members of the party ask him to vie for the office, he might consider it.
“I don’t know. I’m not the one who will say I’m going to contest. It’s a party and members of that party will call you and tell you to contest for this or that position.
“Even when I contested for governor, the people from Kaduna went to former President Muhammadu Buhari and pleaded with him to ask me to contest and I didn’t even want to contest because I don’t know how to do it and I was afraid to,” El-Rufai said.
