Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has defected from the All Progressives Congress.
Atiku,and that in foul mood that leaves no one in doubt he had been angry at the ruling party and its leader President Muhammadu Buhari.
“After due consultation with my God, my family, my supporters and the Nigerian people whom I meet in all walks of life Atiku Abubakar, Waziri Adamawa” has resigned from the APC,’ he said of the decision in a press statement he personally signed on Friday.
Recalling the train of events that ushered him into the APC, Atiku said he was sweet-tongued into the party by its leadership that visited him in his Abuja home December 2013, following the fragmentation of the then ruling PDP.
“It was on the basis of this invitation and the assurances made to me that I, being party-less at that time, due to the fractionalization of my party, accepted on February 2, 2014, the hand of fellowship given to me by the All Progressives Congress.
But things changed.
According to him, the intervening years have shown that like any other human and like many other Nigerians, he was fallible.
“While other parties have purged themselves of the arbitrariness and unconstitutionality that led to fractionalization, the All Progressives Congress has adopted those same practices and even gone beyond them to institute a regime of a draconian clampdown on all forms of democracy within the party and the government it produced,” he said.
Citing a memo Kaduna Gov. Nasir El Rufai sent to Buhari last year, he highlighted the litany of failures and dashed hopes that have come to characterised the Buhari governemnt.
“ In that memo, he admitted that the All Progressives Congress had “not only failed to manage expectations of a populace that expected overnight ‘change’ but has failed to deliver even mundane matters of governance,” said Atiku.
“Of the party itself, that same governor said ‘Mr. President, Sir Your relationship with the national leadership of the party, both the formal (NWC) and informal (Asiwaju Bola Tinubu,
Atiku Abubakar, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso), and former Governors of ANPP, PDP (that joined us) and ACN, is perceived by most observers to be at best frosty. Many of them are aggrieved due to what they consider total absence of consultations with them on your part and those you have assigned such duties.”
He regretted that since that memorandum was written, nothing has been done to reverse the treatment meted out to those of them invited to join the All Progressives Congress.
“But more importantly, the party we put in place has failed and continues to fail our people, especially our young people. How can we have a federal cabinet without even one single youth,’ he said.
He said he admits that he and other drop-ins in the APC have fallen for a mirage.
“Can you blame us for wanting to put a speedy end to the sufferings of the masses of our people?”
The former president did not state where he is headed, but many Nigerians believe his next port of call is the PDP where the party leaders have publicly declared he is welcome.
Atiku will be returning to the party the third time in about 10 years after he exited as vice president of former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2007.
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