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By Ogalah Ibrahim
The Director General (DG) of Senator Yakubu Lado Gubernatorial Campaign Council under the Katsina State Peoples Democratic Party in 2019, Alhaji Sani Abu Minista along with 1,907 others have defected to the ruling All Progressive Congress APC in Katsina State.
The former Lado’s Campaign DG as well as the others officially defected to the ruling APC when the Dikko-Jobe gubernatorial campaign train stormed Danmusa Local Government Area on Saturday to showcase their manifesto and canvass for votes of eligible voters in the area.
Another notable figure among the 1,907 decampees said to be mostly PDP members from across the 11 wards under Danmusa Local Government Area is Alhaji Abdulhamid Aliyu Danmusa, a retired DSS Officer and former Chief Security Officer of the defunct Bank of the North Limited. He was also a former Sole Administrator of Ɗanmusa Local Government Council.
According to reports, both Sani Abu Minister and Abdulhamid Aliyu Ɗanmusa have significant political influence in Ɗanmusa Local Government Area.
Minista also donated an office complex to the APC, which Dr. Dikko Umar Radda, the APC governorship candidate commissioned during the visit.
One of the defectors, Hon. Lawal Shuaibu, a PDP Chieftain and a 2023 House of Representatives aspirants, who spoke to Vanguard on the development said they defected to the APC because they want progress for their people and that is gradually looking like a wild goose chase under the Katsina PDP, currently riddled with crisis.
“We decamped because we want to make progress for our people. The PDP is in serious crisis and we are approaching election in about two months time. How do they expect to win with the chairman of the party suspended or removed from his office among several other unresolved internal crisis till this moment? How do you expect an opposition party working like that to succeed? It is not likely.
“We keep assuring our people that something will be done but here we are almost approaching the D-Day and the party is yet to even kickstart its campaign while APC has completed one zone and are now campaigning in the second zone.
“So, as you can see, a serious politician would not want his people to suffer in the hands of leaders that thinks they are everything. Our governorship candidate (Lado) does not want to make any reconciliation because he thinks he is everything.
“That’s the situation in PDP. We tried to be patient with them to see if we can reconcile but for over two months now and it is to no avail,” Shuaibu said.
When asked why they chose to defect to APC instead of other parties, he said: “In politics it’s give and take. You have to weigh the strength and capacity of each and every party. Before deciding, we met and discussed over the two likely parties, APC and NNPP. Looking at the acceptance of the parties in the state and the structures on ground, we cannot deny that APC has more structures on ground are likely to have an edge over NNPP. So, that’s why we settled for APC.
“Besides, you know it won’t be wise to leave a party that is bedeviled by issues and go to another party that’s sparsely populated or seems not to have the required acceptance to make significant impact in the 2023 election.
“We actually thought of how do we assist in building NNPP, to make it popular but looking at the very short timeframe that cannot be feasible. It is not something you can develop do in one month. That’s why we settled for APC.”
Danmusa LGA is the home town of the erstwhile Katsina Secretary to the State Government, and famous grassroot politician, Dr Mustapha Muhammed Inuwa, who defected to the PDP and is now the Director General of the PDP campaign council for Atiku-Lado in Katsina.
As at the time of filing this report, the PDP campaign DG could not be reached to react to the development.
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