By Ibekimi Oriamaja
Malam Salihu Lukman, the ruling All Progressives Congress’s National Vice Chairman (North-West), says efforts are underway to reconcile disgruntled party members and halt the wave of defections reported in Kaduna and Kebbi states.
Lukman revealed that stakeholders and North West party leaders had met to review and decide how to defuse rising zonal tensions.
Following a meeting of North-West APC leaders on Thursday night at the Katsina Governor’s Lodge in Abuja, the APC vice chair made the clarification.
At least 15 APC chieftains in Kaduna State have defected from the party, citing a lack of internal democracy.
According to one of the defectors, 500 more members will join them as a result of unresolved issues at the state party level.
Among those who defected from the ruling party on Thursday were Mallam Audu Bode, Shuabu Ahmed, Habila Latu, Boniface Ubandoma, Mr. Yakubu Simon, Jashua Peter, Camio Bitrus, and Patrick Paul (Pato).
Others included Samuel Wyah, Zaka Makoshi, Jonathan Fedelix, Barnabas Samuel (Barry), Shua’ibu Yusuf, Alexander Danladi (Lulu), and Samuel Ibrahim.
Ibrahim Samuel, the APC Legal Adviser in Jema’a Local Government Area, stated in a letter to his Ward Chairman, “his decision to dump the party was based on the party’s internal crises, lack of internal democracy, and total disrespect.”
Another statement, signed by Barnabas Samuel and Ibrahim Samuel (Oganto), bemoaned the fact that the names proposed for the primaries were vastly different from those proposed at the previous party congress.
On Thursday in Kebbi’s Argungu local government area, hundreds of APC members defected to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party.
Mansur Yargyra, a former House of Representatives candidate in the ruling APC, led the defection of a slew of disgruntled party members.
Yargyra stated that he left the party due to the injustice meted out to many party members by selfish elements who did not have the best interests of the party at heart.
Following a meeting of North-West leaders on Thursday night, Lukman announced that they had resolved to form state-level committees to address alleged imposition of candidates and other abuses of privilege, with the goal of reconciling all aggrieved members.
He claims that politics is all about competition and that it is natural for party members to disagree during negotiations.
Although the chair of the North-West APC admitted that he did not yet have all of the details of what caused the wave of defections, he was optimistic that the recent fact-finding tour would address the remaining questions next week.
“We should not be seen or appear to be passing judgment on the possibility of nothing happening,” he said. Politics is, first and foremost, a game of competition. Politics is rife with dissent. There can be no political debate unless there is disagreement. As a group, we are working to make the process of reconciliation permanent.
“I’m not sure about the details, but we’ll investigate.” The only outstanding states that we have yet to visit on our ongoing fact-finding tour are Kaduna and Katsina. And we’ve agreed to go see them early next week. This could be one of the issues we look into to figure out what happened and what steps to take.
“We met today (Thursday night) to review the party’s zonal situation.” The main issue is that each state move forward with reconciling disgruntled members. In order to reconcile all stakeholders, we agreed to form state-level committees to meet with all party leaders and disgruntled party members. This will be completed before the general election campaign begins in 2023.”
