A former Federal Commissioner for Information and South-South Leader, Chief Edwin Clark, yesterday, gave an insight into why leaders of the South-South and Middle Belt Leaders Forum are backing former Vice President and presidential candidate of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar as the country’s next President.

According to him, it became imperative for him to support the PDP presidential candidate because he has always been an advocate of restructuring.

Saying that restructuring was the way forward, Clark noted that the country has become more divided.

The Ijaw leader also took a swipe at state governors for saying they lacked the capacity to pay N30,000 minimum wage.

He said this yesterday in Abuja shortly after a campaign group for Atiku under the aegis of Atikulated Leadership Movement, led by its National Coordinator, Mr. Mike Kelechi, made him a patron of the group.

Clark said: “I think we need someone who will restructure this country and someone who believes in restructuring. We, as Southern and Middle Belt leaders, believe that this country should be restructured. During the presidential primaries, we interfaced with about 16 presidential aspirants and we came to the conclusion that whoever believes in the restructuring of Nigeria should be our candidate. That is why we are talking about Atiku today.

“He has been talking about restructuring even before now. It is not what he picked overnight. We believe that whoever talks about restructuring wants a better life for this country and that is the person we are going to vote for.

“It must be remembered that when we interacted with the 16 presidential aspirants, almost all of them believed in the restructuring of this country.

“Anybody stopping it or arguing against it does not want the betterment of Nigeria. As I said earlier, if we do not restructure Nigeria, we do not want the survival of Nigeria as a country. Even the APC which is the ruling government set up a committee which recommended that they should restructure this country. The recommendations are identical.’’

•Sourced from The Vanguard report

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