Nigeria’s former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar has officially declared his intention to run for the 2019 presidential election on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.

His declaration came few months after he left the All Progressives Congress, APC.

Atiku made his position known while addressing stakeholders of the PDP drawn from the 23 Local Government Areas of Rivers State at Government House, Port Harcourt.

The former Vice President said he decided to announce his intention in Rivers state because of Governor Nyesom Wike, who he described as the life of the PDP.

He stated that Wike reminds him of what he represented in 1998/99.

He stated that under the present APC-led Federal Government, the entire economy had collapsed.

“We all know what we have gone through in this country in the last three years.

“I can tell you throughout the whole of today that where the PDP left us in the last three years whether in the education sector, in the health sector, or in the economy, we have been going down in every statistics.

“That is why I have offered myself to run for the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 2019,” he said.

In his response, Governor Wike said with the likes of the former vice President Atiku in the PDP, it gives hope that the party would come back to power in 2019.