The Labour Party has declared that it has no plan to merge with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to remove the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2027 general elections.
Africa Today News, New York recalls that the presidential candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar had on Tuesday, suggested that opposition parties will seriously need to merge to defeat the ruling APC in the next presidential poll.
LP spokesman, Obiora Ifoh while reacting to Atiku’s suggestion in a statement on Thursday said the party has not discussed any merger
Ifoh said Atiku’s call ‘was only a proposal and every Nigerian should be interested in making democracy work in Nigeria and that what we have presently is an autocracy’.
‘There was nowhere in the response that the purported merger between LP and PDP was mentioned,’ Ifoh emphasised.
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Atiku spoke while receiving a delegation from the national executive committee of the Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC) on Tuesday.
The former Vice President noted that Nigeria’s democracy would suffer if there is no viable opposition.
According to Atiku: ‘You have come here today to say that we should cooperate in order to promote democracy.
‘But the truth of the matter is that our democracy is fast becoming a one-party system, and of course, you know that when we have a one-party system, we should just forget about democracy.
‘We have all seen how the APC is increasingly turning Nigeria into a dictatorship of one party.
‘If we don’t come together to challenge what the ruling party is trying to create, our democracy will suffer for it, and the consequences of it will affect the generations yet unborn. The project of protecting democracy in our country is not about just one man.’
Meanwhile, the APC faulted Atiku’s merger plan saying he was still struggling to come to terms with reality after his loss at the presidential poll
In a statement by the National Publicity Secretary of APC, Felix Morka said the PDP should focus on resolving its internal party crisis.