APC has described Former House of Rep Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, Ex-SGF, Babachir Lawal, and others kicking against the party’s Muslim-Muslim ticket as impostors and no longer in the party.
Newsonline reports that Presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has described former House of Representatives Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, and ex-Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF, Mr Babachir Lawal, and the group they represent as a band of impostors.
He also declared that Dogara is no longer a member of the APC and cannot be said to be speaking for any group of APC members.
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This online media platform reported that a group of Northern Christian leaders led by Dogara and Lawal, on Saturday, held a consultative meeting and dialogue with Northern APC Christian leaders and Northern Muslim political leaders at NAF Conference Centre, Kado, Abuja and resolved not to vote for Tinubu over the same faith ticket of the APC.
Reacting to this, Tinubu who spoke as President Muhammadu Buhari while inaugurating the women’s campaign team of the party, yesterday, said there is no alternative to the APC next year.
Also reacting to the outcome of Dogara’s meeting, the Director of Media and Publicity at the Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council, Mr Bayo Onanuga, declared that “Dogara has apparently lost his mind since he could not realise his self-imposed ambition to be on the presidential ticket of the APC.”
On account of this, Tinubu said the former speaker has certainly become a reprobate and demagogue, delivering hate speeches and whipping up emotions, with the aim of setting our country ablaze.
“The Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council is therefore not surprised by media reports about a meeting of some so-called Northern Christian leaders, who claimed to be members of our All Progressives Congress that was championed by Dogara and his ilk. The claim was totally fraudulent.
“Yakubu Dogara, the peripatetic and politically unstable politician who organised the meeting left our party officially and unceremoniously weeks ago. And those who attended the meeting were representing themselves, their selfish agenda, not Northern Christians.
“Before then, the former speaker had spearheaded a campaign of vitriol and hate against our party, using religion as camouflage, after he lost the vice-presidential candidacy to a better qualified Senator Kashim Shettima,” he added.
Tinubu noted that a careful reading of the people who attended the “unholy meeting” he called also showed that they were all PDP members masquerading as APC members.
“Among the politicians at the unholy consultative meeting were Mukhar Shagari, Boni Haruna, Abdulfattah Ahmed; Damishi Sango; Senator Idris Ahmed Umar; and two former deputy governors of Kogi State, Yomi Awoniyi and Simon Achuba. They are all PDP members working for the presidential ambition of Atiku Abubakar. “We were not surprised by the resolutions adopted. Our surprise was that the media failed to read through their smokescreen.
“The APC PCC wondered how the assembly of strange bedfellows hoped to foster unity and cohesion in our country when their candidate represents the antithesis of the goal, having emerged the greatest divider of our polity between the North and South.
“All Nigerians are aware that Atiku’s emergence as the PDP presidential candidate grossly violated a power rotation code between the North and the South. His insistence on snatching and retaining what rightly belongs to another political region has triggered a crisis within his party, making him run from Port Harcourt to London to mend fences.
We want to assure Dogara and his co-travellers fanning hate campaign against our Presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and his running mate, that they will fail spectacularly at the polls.
“From the engagements our leaders have had with men of all faiths, bigotry will not win next February election. What will prevail are the track records of our candidates and the solution-driven and all-inclusive progressive programmes the candidates offer Nigerians.
“Asiwaju Tinubu and Senator Shettima are going into this campaign with clear objectives to engage Nigerians across the socio-economic brackets on policy actions that will make their lives better. Our candidates will not exploit our country’s fault lines to win election and sell religion as Kool Aid,” he added.
This online media platform gathered that the Northern Christian leaders led by Dogara and Lawal consultative meeting and dialogue with Northern APC Christian leaders and Northern Muslim political leaders, on Saturday, resolved to work with its Muslim counterparts in the North to adopt one of the other 17 presidential candidates.
A communique issued at the end of the meeting, on Sunday, said those in attendance agreed not to support the Tinubu/Shettima ticket, but to work together and jointly adopt a pan-Nigerian political platform that would engender unity, inclusiveness and a sense of belonging among Nigerian citizens.
The communique was jointly signed by Yakubu Dogara and former deputy governor of Sokoto State, and Minister of Water Resources, Alhaji Mukhari Shagari.
It read in parts: “Conscious of the multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural configuration of Nigeria we believe a same faith ticket and voting along religious lines may trigger dangerous dimensions of negative consequences among our disparate peoples in ways that will hamper nation building.
“Consequently, we have agreed to channel our energies on matters that unite us more as a people instead of encouraging attacks on sensitive issues bordering on religion in the name of politics. In view of the above, we have agreed to set up a committee with the mandate to fashion out strategies for advancing the objectives set forth in this resolution.”
