Date: 2014-03-02

The Kwara State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has urged the people of the state to troop out to receive President Goodluck Jonathan and members of the National Working Committee (NWC) who are visiting the state tomorrow.

President Jonathan and the party’s national chairman, Alh Adamu Muazu will address a rally at the Ilorin Metropolitan Square on Monday. The rally will also receive new defectors into the party.

PDP caretaker committee chairman in the state, Hon. Solomon Edoja had on Friday told newsmen that seven different committees had been inaugurated towards the successful hosting of the president, saying Jonathan and other big wigs of the PDP are coming to join Kwarans in what he called their “liberation struggle”.

Sunday Trust observed that the venue of the rally has been decorated with PDP’s flag hoisted all over the place, just as billboards bearing Jonathan and Muazu’s photographs were mounted in strategic places in Ilorin.

Our correspondent gathered that the Presidential advanced team had arrived in Ilorin on Friday night and its members held meetings with relevant stakeholders and organisations that have roles to play in ensuring a hitch-free rally.

Chairman of the mobilization committee on the visit, Alhaji Abdulrasaq Lawal in a statement yesterday urged party stalwarts, members and supporters to arrive the venue of the rally by 8.00.m.

The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has, however, asked the PDP to shelve the rally in honour of the students murdered in a Boko Haram attack in Yobe, saying going ahead with the presidential visit would amount to insentivity.

The party, in a statement by its interim Director of Publicity, Alhaji Sulaiman Buhari said, “May we remind these insensitive politicians in the state, Mr President and all those politicians that the president seeks to rehabilitate that the saner thing to do by all patriotic Nigerians is to feel and act sober, draw the grief-stricken people together, share in their pains and attempt to restore hope in the almost hopeless situation that parts of the country have been thrown into.

“We, therefore, call on our peace loving President to turn down the request of these desperate politicians to further justify his well-known position that no individual ambition is worth the blood of a single Nigerian.”