Date: 2018-08-23

The Senate President Bukola Saraki Wednesday predicted that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) would win the 2019 presidential elections and produce a new president for Nigeria.

Saraki, who defected from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to the PDP recently, also said he was confident that his new party would emerge victorious at all levels in Kwara State.

The Senate president spoke in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, at a meeting with PDP members from all the wards in the 16 local government areas of the state and said the future of PDP was better and brighter than the past, promising to ensure cohesion between the old and new party members so as to ensure its electoral victory at all levels in the country.

He said the victory of PDP at both federal and state levels would be beneficial to all the members in the state, explaining that it would wipe off the challenges they had faced under the Muhammadu Buhari administration.

According to him, "If we emerge victorious at the federal level, all of us will be the beneficiaries. With your support we will win the state.

"All of you here are the key players in Kwara politics. With unity of purpose no party can contest with you.

"We are here to unite all of us under the party we belong to today. I am assuring all members that there will be equity, internal democracy and justice. It is not going to be winner takes all. As far as I am concerned everybody here today belongs to our political structure.

"There is nothing like old or new PDP. We have all become one PDP. There is nobody here that will not say one way or the other we have not been together before. I am very sure that the future is bigger and brighter than the past. I want all of us to be united for the progress and development of Kwara State.

"Regarding the politics of the state, nobody can wrest power from us if we are united. By the grace of God, in the forthcoming elections, we will emerge victorious both at the federal and state levels."

Saraki added: "We will ensure that we work as one party, because we have always worked together before. We will see that all the wards and local governments popular candidates emerge based on their popularity and acceptability.

"I want to emphasis it that I don't have any anointed candidate at all levels. I don't have candidates for state assembly, it is the person you want in your constituency that I will okay. Don't allow anybody to deceive you that I have endorsed any candidate."

He stressed: "I implore party leaders and elders not to drop my name to impose unpopular candidates. I don't have candidate for the National Assembly. All of us will collectively choose the next governor.

"We will ensure that there is no faction but one PDP. We will ensure that meetings in the local government areas take place in one venue. And we will all work together for the interest of the party."

He said: "Please go back home to start the work. I am sure many more will come back and join us especially those that left under the wrong assumption that it will be different from what it used to be.

"They were misled that those coming are out to move them away. Nobody is moving you away because this place belongs to you too. Let us go back and start work closely together and by the grace of God we will all be victorious.

"I urge both the old and new members of the party to ensure peace and harmony in your wards and local government areas."