Reject APC’s Buhari, vote Atiku – Hagher tells SDP supporters

A Social Democratic Party (SDP)’s presidential candidate, Professor Iyorwuese Hagher, has called on all SDP party faithfuls, nationwide, to vote for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)’s candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar in next week’s presidential election.

Hagher, at a news conference in Makurdi on Friday, said his move was predicated on the extremely unpopular decision taken by the SDP leadership to back the APC President Muhammadu Buhari’s candidature.

He described the SDP’s national leadership’s adoption of Buhari as being motivated by selfishness, greed and arrogance, stressing that they had killed the social democratic spirit and dream of the SDP to be the third political force in the country.

“It is no longer the SDP of Moshood Abiola. They have systematically destroyed democracy in the SDP and put up the party for sale. As a major stakeholder of the party, I hereby denounce the decision to sell the SDP to the APC.

 “I will never succumb to the pressure to return the country that I loved dearly and wanted to be president to brutal dictatorship and fascism. I call on all SDP supporters nationwide to reject being sold to slavery, incipient dictatorship, oppression and recurrent insecurity.

“This unpopular arbitrary decision of a few insensitive and wantonly parasitic party leaders is a grave betrayal of loyal SDP members nationwide, who have endured senseless arbitrariness, terrible greed and the painful process of building the party. I feel this betrayal personally and viscerally.

“I hereby call on all SDP party faithful nationwide, who stand for national cohesion, nation-building, equity and equality and a peaceful Nigeria, to vote against the APC and instead, support and vote for the PDP candidate, Atiku Abubakar next week 16th February,” he said.

Hagher, a former Senator representing Benue North East and former Minister as well as Nigeria’s Ambassador to Mexico and High Commissioner to Canada, further regretted that his SDP had been hijacked by a few clever politicians, who used the platform as a political trap to entice him and other political leaders that genuinely wanted the third force outside the APC and the PDP.