Less than four days to the presidential elections, 400 Civil Society Organizations (CSO) have endorsed the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar.
Convener of the CSOs, Hon Kunle Yusuf, disclosed this yesterday in Abuja at an event organised by the CSOs with the theme, the “role of civil Society organisation on election credibility in Nigeria.”
According to him, the manifesto of Atiku aligns with their developmental agenda .
He said “Civil Society is a very key sector in Nigeria most especially at this time. They will be playing their constitutional role on Saturday by observation. Some of them will be doing that by monitoring. I’m from them, they are my colleagues.
“They have called themselves together and they said they want to work with Atiku Abubakar having studied and scrutinized his manifesto.
“They said his manifesto aligned with the development agenda and because they are also development agents, they have accepted, agreed and ready to work with Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. And they are ready to work with him based on development purposes.
Yusuf further said “CSOs have different roles, in education, in environment and others. In Nigeria today, we have over 40,000 CSOs registered by the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).
All of them are performing different responsibilities with over 5 million workforce. If you now have a cluster of civil societies that are ready to endorse you as their president, you know that is a very good positive development.
“This is the same hall where in 2011 the CSOs endorsed President Goodluck Jonathan coordinated by the late Oronto Douglas and again in 2015 when they refused and we all knew what happened in 2015 when General Muhammadu Buhari became the president.
“Today we are happy that in the same hall few days to election, the civil societies have agreed to accept to partner with the development agenda of Atiku Abubakar’s manifesto.
“We all know what is happening in Nigeria. We know where we are. We need a president that will take us from this point to another point. We need a president that knows what development is all about and a president that will be accepted globally and that is Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
“In his manifesto, he has taken properly the issue of social inclusion, youth development, the IDPs and most critically the issue of climate change.
