•Oyo senator writes senate, dumps PDP for ruling party
Francis Sardauna in Katsina and Sunday Aborisade in Abuja
The 2015 and 2019 governorship candidate of the National Conscience Party (NCP) in Katsina State, Abdulmunini Shehu Sani, has described the All Progressives Congress (APC) administration of Governor Aminu Bello Masari of the state, as a total failure.
This is as the senator representing Oyo South Senatorial District, Kola Balogun, has written the Senate about his defection from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the ruling APC.
Sani, however, said Masari, APC and all those working with him had plunged the state and its citizens into poverty, economic hardship, insecurity and depression, while the ruling class spent public money meant for the development of the state lavishly.
Addressing journalists in Katsina, yesterday, he also accused the governor and the APC administration of borrowing billions of naira without executing any meaningful project that would alleviate the sufferings of the masses.
His words: “The APC administration in Katsina State, has failed. It is the most secretive government in the history of the state, because there is absolutely no accountability in running its affairs.
“Before the Aminu Bello Masari administration came on board, Katsina State, had never taken any loan. But now, we owe billions of naira in loans. Katsina State indigenes should demand to know the amount of debt/loans that has accrued to the state in the last seven years.”
He, therefore, called on citizens of the state to vote out the APC administration in the forthcoming general election, saying the administration had destroyed everything it found in place and left citizens in abject poverty.
The NCP chieftain further alleged that the APC administration rigged the April 11 local government elections in the state, “But with the electronic transmission of results in the 2023 general election, APC will not win a single polling unit in the state,” adding: “No citizen in his right senses will vote for a government that has introduced poverty, disease, hunger, death, cheating and betrayal of trust.”
Meanwhile, Balogun’s notice of defection was contained in a letter addressed to the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, and read at plenary yesterday.
His defection brings the number of APC Senators in the upper chamber to 70.
According to him, his decision to defect from the PDP was due to the lack of internal democracy in the APC at the state level for the emergence of leaders and representatives, adding that the development has further led to the existence of several factions and aggrieved groups within the party.
He, however, attributed his action to the alleged impunity of the Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde.
“The decision to resign was informed by the Oyo State Governor’s reign of impunity that, had led him into supplanting the constitutional assigned roles of party bureaucrats and party stakeholders and replacing them with unilaterally declared decisions on who and who should emerge as the legitimate representatives of the people.
“This unconstitutional, flagrant and dictatorial procedural breeches for the emergence of leaders and representatives of the people, has led to the factionalisation of the party, this breeding several aggrieved groups within the party and mass exodus of key leaders from the party.
“This development has laid the foundation for the failure of the party at subsequent polls and also stand to jeopardise the political future and interest of my people, who had worked assiduously to get me elected in the 2019 February elections.
“Rising from the meeting of the key stakeholders in my district, on 27th April, 2022, my people unanimously decided that I should resign my membership of the Peoples Democratic Party as they were ready to also rain and decamp en masse with me to the All Progressives Congress with immediate effect.
“This notification becomes exigency in order to intimate the distinguished members of senate with the recent political developments in the PDP-led administration in Oyo State, and the direction in which my people and I are presently focused.”
