THE resignation, on Friday, of a former vice president, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, from the All Progressives Congress (APC) has drawn the ire of the ruling party as it described the reasons he gave as a pack of lies.
The National Vice Chairman (South South) of the APC, Honourable Ntufam Etta, told Saturday Tribune, on Friday, that the party was not jolted by the former vice president’s decision.
Atiku had, in a statement announcing his resignation, said he left the APC for failing and continuing to fail “our people, especially our young people.”
He went on to accuse the ruling party of adopting “arbitrariness and unconstitutionality” and instituting “a regime of a draconian clampdown on all forms of democracy within the party and the government it produced.”
The former nation’s number two citizen claimed that the hope of the rebirth of the country under the APC had been dashed and acknowledged that he and others had accepted the invitation to join the party in 2014 “on the strength of a promise that has proven to be false.”
But Etta told Saturday Tribune that for a while, it had been speculated that Atiku was moving over to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and therefore his eventual resignation from the APC had not come as a surprise.
“It has been in the news that he was going to move to the PDP,” he said.
Honourable Etta, however, faulted the former vice president’s submission of arbitrariness and unconstitutionality levelled against the party’s leadership and the Buhari administration.
“His letter is full of fallacies, an excuse to foster his desperate attempt to be president on Nigeria. It has nothing to do with bad leadership in APC.
“He should tell the truth that he is leaving because the APC presidential ticket will not be available to him. He should have been honest to himself that he is leaving because he thinks the APC ticket isn’t going to be available to him. That’s all,” he said.
Also speaking with Saturday Tribune, the National Publicity Secretary of the party, Bolaji Abdullahi, said the party was not aware that the former vice president had resigned his membership, as he noted that the national secretariat of the ruling party had not received any notification letter from Atiku Abubakar.
He said: “We have not seen any formal notification to that effect but based on what we have seen in the social media, we can say it is surprising but for us, politics is all about interest. So, if the former vice president feels that his interest is better served elsewhere, we can always wish him good luck.
“For us, the task of building a political party is not a day’s job; it is marathon and it takes many years and we will continue to improve on our system until we are able to get the kind of party that we want to really, really build,” he said.
APC has failed Nigerians –Atiku
In his statement, on Friday, Atiku said he had arrived at the decision to quit the APC after due consultations with his family, supporters and the Nigerian people.
The statement, which provided the trajectory of his now sour relationship with the ruling party, reads: “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 factionalised as a result of the special convention of August 31, 2013.
“The fractionalisation of the Peoples Democratic Party on August 31, 2013 had left me in a situation where I, with several other loyal party members, was 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 actualised 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 fractionalisation 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 beginning 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 fractionalisation, 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.
“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 behaviours 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?
Truth has set Atiku free –PDP
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has described Atiku’s resignation from the APC as showing that he has seen the truth and it has set him free.
Reacting to the former vice president’s move at a press conference in Abuja on Friday, the National Publicity Secretary of the leading opposition party, Prince Dayo Adeyeye, said Atiku had seen that the APC were not what they claimed they were but a deception.
He said Atiku was welcome to the PDP without any preconditions if he chooses to come back to the party he helped to found.
According to him, the former vice president man will be free to contest for the presidential ticket of the party in accordance with the party’s constitution.
The PDP spokesman also appealed to other former members of the party who joined the APC to reconsider their decision and return to the PDP.
“The former vice president, Atiku, who was one of the founding fathers, contested and won elections as governor of Adamawa State on the platform of the PDP.
“But before he was sworn in, he was nominated by Olusegun Obasanjo as his running mate and they were sworn in as president and vice president. Again, they both ran in 2003. So, he is a true PDP man to the core.
“However and unfortunately, in 2013, they were deceived into believing that there was a platform that would correct all the ills in the PDP and that it could create an Eldorado in Nigeria.
“I believe they were deceived, people like Atiku. Because we had challenges in our party at that point in time, they went and join the new party called the APC which we have all now seen – every Nigerian has seen – is a fallacy.
“The day the APC was born marked a tragedy for Nigeria. It has been a monumental disaster for Nigeria. There is nothing progressive in them. Everything about them is unprogressive. Everything about them is complete disaster.
“It is human to make mistakes because we are not infallible. We have no knowledge of what will happen in the future. Human beings can always be deceived. But in John 8:32, the Bible says ‘And you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.’
“I believe Atiku Abubakar has come to know the truth like he said in the statement that he has now known the truth, that the APC is not what they call themselves, is not a better platform. That platform is the worst platform in the history of politics in Nigeria.
“I believe that Atiku has seen the truth and the truth has now set him free and we thank God for that.
“Therefore, being a founding father and because we have an umbrella that is big enough to accommodate everybody, PDP is a democratic party. PDP is a free party and was conceived for all Nigerians and is free from all religious, ethnicity and geographical divisions.
“It has capacity to accommodate everybody. Our doors are open for him to come back to his home without any precondition. He is free to come back like every other Nigerian and we want to appeal to those who have not seen the truth and we are praying that they will soon see the truth so that the truth will set them free. And as soon as they are free, let them come back,” Adeyeye said.
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