Atiku
Abubakar has accused the All Progressives Congress of failing Nigerians as the
reason why he dumped the party.
A former Vice President of Nigeria Atiku Abubakar has made
public his reasons for dumping the All Progressives Congress as he said, the
party failed him and many other Nigerians.
In a letter he wrote on Friday, Atiku accused the party of
arbitrariness, unconstitutionality, and factionalization as the reasons for the
division in the party.
Speaking about his annoyance, Atiku said: "On the
19th of December, 2013, I received members of the All Progressives Congress at
my house in Abuja. They had come to appeal to me to join their party after my
party, the Peoples Democratic Party, had become factionalized as a result of
the special convention of August 31, 2013.
The fractionalization of the Peoples’ Democratic Party on August
31, 2013 had left me in a situation where I was, with several other loyal party
members, in limbo, not knowing which of the parallel executives of the party
was the legitimate leadership.
It was under this cloud that members of the APC made the appeal
to me to join their party, with the promise that the injustices and failure to
abide by its own constitution which had dogged the then PDP, would not be
replicated in the APC and with the assurance that the vision other founding
fathers and I had for the PDP could be actualized through the All Progressives
Congress.
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.
On that day, I said “it is the struggle for democracy and
constitutionalism and service to my country and my people that are driving my
choice and my decision” to accept the invitation to join the All Progressives
Congress.
Like you, I said that because I believed that we had finally
seen the beginnings of the rebirth of the new Nigeria of our dreams which would
work for all of us, old and young.
However, events of the intervening years have shown that like
any other human and like many other Nigerians, I 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."
Narrating how he came to a conclusion to end his affairs with
APC, he added: "Only last year, a governor produced by the party
wrote a secret memorandum to the president which ended up being leaked. 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”.
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.”
Since that memorandum was written up until today, nothing has
been done to reverse the treatment meted out to those of us invited to join the
All Progressives Congress on the strength of a promise that has proven to be
false. If anything, those behaviors have actually worsened.
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.
A party that does not take the youth into account is a dying
party. The future belongs to young people."
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