•Says Buhari betrayed him
By Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja
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The leadership of the new splinter group in the All Progressives Congress (APC), the Reformed All Progressives Congress has vowed that no one would win the presidential election in 2019 without its endorsement.
The group, which support base is mainly from the New Peoples Democratic Party (nPDP) political bloc in the APC, last Thursday formally declared its existence and listed several national and state officers of the faction.
Speaking on Arise Television network yesterday, the National Chairman of rAPC, Buba Galadima said that one of the reasons for the emergence of the faction was the failure of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led APC administration to fulfill the promises made to the people.
On what would happen if APC ignored their group, Galadima said: “Anybody that neglects us is doing so at his own peril and I want to say here that no one would become the president of Nigeria in 2019 without the support of the rAPC.”Â
The rAPC Chairman said that the only way President Buhari could get the support of Nigerians for his second term bid was if he “performs and is able to deliver dividends of democracy according to the party’s manifesto.”
Galadima, who is regarded as a very close ally of President Buhari’s until lately, said the president betrayed him by abandoning him and others who were part of the political struggle to make him president.
He said the president had disappointed those of them that gave him support because he was unable to perform.
He said that President Buhari had reneged on their campaign promises to better the lives of poor Nigerians.
“He betrayed me on the agreement to better the lives of Nigerians, to bring reconciliation to Nigerians, to build the economy, to build the infrastructure,” he said.Â
An apparently embittered former National Secretary of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) accused President Buhari of betraying him by abandoning those of them that struggled with him to become president.
“We brought him into partisan politics, we made all the sacrifices to make him what he is, everyone out of the 34 left, except the two of us up till 2015, and we had departure points. But the most important thing is that I was the founder and the national secretary of the Congress for Progressive Change, a platform on which he contested in 2011, and I had to forfeit and resign that position to bring about the amalgamation of what is now called the APC.Â
“So, that is a big sacrifice and I was one of the nine signatories that signed the memorandum of understanding dissolving our parties and recommending the APC to INEC for registration,” he said.
Galadima also spoke of the integrity tag that President Buhari flaunts, saying that his performance in office has helped Nigerians to assess him.
“I was with General Buhari from 2002 till date and a couple of us, about 35 of us, introduced him into partisan politics, which took us hell to convince him to come into politics. Thank God we did that, if General Buhari had died that time, Nigerians would have thought he was a saint and they would have been going to his grave to worship him in death,” he added.
