By Pascal Oparada,
Social Media/Tech Reporter
The presidential candidate of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN), Oby Ezekwesili said she is withdrawing from the 2019 presidential race to form a coalition with other candidates.
Ezekwesili announced this today via her Twitter handle.
“Following the reactions of Nigerian citizens at home and abroad to the 2019 Presidential Debate held on Saturday 19 January 2019, and after extensive consultations with leaders from various walks of life across the country over the past few days…”
“I have decided to step down from the presidential race and focus on helping to build a Coalition for a viable alternative to the #APCPDP in the 2019 general elections,” She said in the tweet thread.
Ezekwesili said she is ready to go into a coalition with other candidates so as to get the country working.
“Over the past three months, I have been private talks with other candidates to make a coalition possible that would allow Nigerians to exercise choice without feeling helplessly saddled with the APCPDP,” she said.
She said in doing so she has not hesitated to offer her “willingness to step down my candidacy in order to facilitate the emergence of a strong and viable alternative behind which Nigeria can line up in our collective search for a new beginning.”
Ezekwesili was at the forefront of the Red Card Movement, which she says would be used to send the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) packing in 2019. She emerged presidential candidate of ACPN in October 2018.
Her emergence was greeted with mixed feelings with some saying she would eat into the vote basket of the main opposition party, the PDP, and thus hand the victory over to President Muhammadu Buhari who is running for reelection in the February poll.