Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 presidential election, Peter Obi, will soon defect to the Social Democratic Party (SDP).

SDP’s presidential candidate in the 2023 election, Adewole Adebayo, disclosed this on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics. His revelation comes weeks after former Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai dumped the ruling All Progressives Congress for the SDP.

Mr Adebayo said, “People are joining my party, and we are welcoming them. You can see how active I am in welcoming them. The only little issue we have with some of them is to change the culture where if you have not been in an environment where rules are taken seriously. 

“All these people you have mentioned, El-Rufai, Atiku Abubakar, and even former Governor Peter Obi, are coming. A lot of people are coming, and we will welcome them. Supposedly, until somebody joins, we don’t know. But people have told me, and the financial secretary of (SDP) has also informed me that they are talking. So we will welcome everybody.”

The presidential hopeful urged incoming party members not to become a tower of Babel but to follow the rules and allow one person to emerge transparently without cheating or criminality, just like the party did in its 2022 convention, which attracted no court case, crisis or allegations.

“If they can stick to our culture and follow the way we do in the SDP and produce a good alternative to Nigerians, we are going to manifestly defeat the APC and retire President Tinubu to Lagos or wherever he chooses in Nigeria.”

Responding to Mr Adebayo’s claim, the interim national coordinator of the Obidient Movement Worldwide, Yunusa Tanko, and Mr Abubakar’s spokesperson, Paul Ibe, said their principals had no plans to join the SDP.

“As I speak to you, Atiku Abubakar is a member of the PDP and remains a member of the PDP,” Mr Ibe told Peoples Gazette over the telephone. 

“Any speculations, anything to the contrary, is unknown to us. I can also confirm to you, not specifically with reference to the SDP, that His Excellency has triggered a coalition of different stakeholders and leaders of different parties.”

In the same vein, Mr Yunusa, during an interview on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief on Monday, said, “As far as I am concerned, His Excellency, Peter Obi, is a member of the Labour Party. It remains so until when there is any other thing that may come up.”

He also disclosed that Labour Party leaders will, during the week, meet “to make fundamental positions clear to everyone, and in line with the position of the Supreme Court ruling and that, of course, will put the whole matter to rest.”