PDP will win 2023 presidential election- Okowa Declares

Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa, governor of Delta State and vice presidential candidate for the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), has predicted that the party will prevail in all six states in Nigeria’s South-South geopolitical zone in the country’s 2019 presidential election.

In Calabar, Cross River State, over the weekend, where he formally opened the Atiku/Okowa Presidential Campaign Office, Okowa made this statement.

Okowa claimed that the PDP is firmly established in the South-South and is ready to win the presidential election and all other elections in the region in 2023. He was speaking to members of the campaign council, party members, and supporters.

According to Okowa, the PDP is certain to win the state and the entire South-South zone because to the council’s dedication and the support of the people of Cross River.

He praised the Presidential Campaign Council’s (PCC) management in Cross River State, stating the amount of work they had already accomplished on the ground was evident and palpable.

In response to the APC’s sinking ship, the PDP vice presidential candidate declared his firm belief that the party would “recover, rescue and reconstruct Cross River State, the South-South zone, and the nation.”

Inaugurating the PDP National Youth Campaign Council and the Women’s Wing of the Presidential Campaign Council in the state, the Governor of Akwa Ibom State and Chairman of the Atiku/Okowa National Presidential Campaign Council, Mr. Udom Emmanuel, claimed that the PDP had never lost a general election in Cross River State since 1999.

According to Udom, the PDP’s success in the state and the South-South zone is a culture that would be upheld throughout the national elections in 2023.

He claimed that the South-South governors are working together with the PDP to assure the victory of the party’s nominees in 2023.

Senator Liyel Imoke, a former governor of Cross River State and a prominent PDP figure in the state, stated in his remarks that he is confident the PDP would win the state handily given the caliber of individuals inaugurated into the youth and women’s wings of the presidential campaign council.

Imoke, the Atiku/Okowa NPCC’s Deputy Director (Operations), welcomed the vice presidential candidate, the governors of the South-Southern states present, and other prominent visitors, thanking them for attending the ceremony and honoring the PDP.

READ ALSO: APC worse than PDP  Kwankwaso to Atiku

While delivering his welcome address prior to the inauguration, Senator Gershom Bassey, who represents the Cross River Southern Senatorial District and is the chairman of the Cross River State Presidential Campaign Council, stated that the PDP in the state is already in the trenches and working hard to win the 2023 general elections.

Because winning is ingrained in the party’s ethos in Cross River State, according to Bassey, the PDP has never lost a presidential election there.

He said: “APC in the state is trying to learn the game of electioneering from the PDP and will never know it enough to outclass the masters. The PDP will cruise to victory and Atiku Abubakar will win with Cross River State convincingly.”

Meanwhile, Atiku Abubakar, and his counterparts, from the Labour Party, Peter Obi, and New Nigerian People’s Party, Rabiu Kwankwaso, have proffered their respective solutions to the incessant strike actions by lecturers of public universities in the country.

They also promised to increase investments in the education sector to reverse the growing number of out-of-school children in the country and revitalize the health sector.

The candidates spoke on Sunday during the Arise TV presidential town hall series on ‘Education, healthcare, poverty and human capital,’ which was monitored by The PUNCH.

Atiku noted that the government should work with relevant agencies to avoid a bottleneck in the funds earmarked for the education sector in a bid to end the constant strike actions of the Academic Staff Union of Universities.

READ ALSO: 2023; Retire Atiku with your votes -Tinubu charges voters

He said, “In terms of their arrears and their salary structure, the government must be prepared to invest more in the running of our universities. And then, we should also avoid a bottleneck in getting these funds to the right places which are the universities.

“In the current structure, there is a bottleneck. When the government releases funding to the universities it goes into another agency of the government and that agency now stifles the universities from getting this funding; forget about whether the fund is sufficient or not.

“Let me give you an example when I was vice president, I enlisted a few foreign missions, I found out that they were not receiving their salaries and allowances and were not paying remittances for months and I called the Minister of Finances then. Each embassy submitted its budget and after it was approved, we now started wiring these monies right to these embassies. The people did not like this, but it was the right thing to do.”