PDP now out of 2027 coalition talks – Babachir

Babachir Lawal was a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation. In this interview with ADEBAYO FOLORUNSHO-FRANCIS, the chieftain of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change dissect his problems with President Bola Tinubu’s government, what Atiku and El-Rufai coalition seeks to achieve, the division among the CPC bloc, among others

PDP governors recently met to rule out the idea of the party merging into any coalition ahead of 2027. How does that affect Atiku’s ongoing coalition talks?

I can speak on behalf of Atiku. But every time we had discussions with members of other groups working toward a coalition, the name PDP never came up. Everybody we talk to about PDP, the answer we get is that it is an incurable virus. I have attended almost all the meetings of all the groups. But I have never attended a meeting where the PDP was one of the parties up for consideration among those of us discussing the merger. Of course, Atiku is a whale in the PDP. I don’t know whether his plans would have been to bring the PDP into the merger. But you know the modalities we have been discussing are whether we could form a brand new political party, that’s one option, or we could all as a group join an existing party. That has been our direction. As we analyse the parties that we could join, I have never had anyone mention PDP.