2015: Nyako, supporters in moves to join APC

By Umar Yusuf Yola
Facts  have emerged  in Yola, Adamawa State that governors of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, controlled states in the north have asked their supporters to join the opposition All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP, ahead of the registration of the  All Progressive Congress, APC.

This was discovered at a PDP stakeholders forum held in Yola, yesterday by supporters of Governor Murtala Nyako.

According to sources, top members of the party loyal to Alhaji Umaru Mijjinyawa Kugama’s faction were said to have taken the decision to ditch their party in a meeting held in Yola yesterday. Governor Nyako and Senator Ahmed Barata are among those expected to dump the party.

Those who attended the meeting included state commissioners, local government chairmen, PDP ward chairmen and secretaries, special advisers and assistants as well as other principal officers of government in the PDP controlled states.

Governor Nyako is known to be engaged in a bitter struggle for who would control the party structure with the National Chairman of the party and indigene of the state, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur.  At the Nyako factional meeting, the stakeholders were said to have concluded arrangements to dump the PDP for the All Nigeria People’s Party, ANPP from where they would be registered in the APC.

They were also reportedly briefed by some of their leaders on the plan  by other governors of PDP controlled states, especially in the north to move out en-mass for the new opposition party.

According to sources, the reason for their leaving the party was to ensure that President Goodluck Jonathan would not win the 2015 general election.

However, in order to avoid being branded as committing anti-party activities by the PDP national leadership, governors on the party’s platform would remain in the party until 2015, before decamping to the APC.

Sources told Saturday Vanguard that apart from aggrieved party members in Kano, others in PDP controlled states in the north would also decamp to the ANPP, preparatory to joining the APC, now undergoing INEC’s scrutiny for registration.

Frustrated northern PDP members are said to be calculating that, altogether, all members of the party in 21crisis ridden chapters of the party would decamp to the APC, to form a formidable opposition against President Jonathan’s emergence in 2015.

At the Yola meeting, the PDP faction was said to have apart from directing their members to register with the APC also requested for additional 30,000 ANPP membership cards for them, even as they would eventually join the APC.

The registration in the ANPP  before the 2015 election was to ensure that the new members were not denied their rights in the new APC, in case of those nursing various political ambition.

Some of the governors, Saturday Vanguard was reliably told have already shown their opposition to Jonathan’s emergence through, the Northern States Governors Forum, NSGF.

According to sources at the venue of the meeting, in Yola, most members chose to join the ANPP which had fused into the APC because of fears that INEC could frustrate the registration of the new party.

The Director of Press and Public Affairs to Governor Murtala Nyako of Admawa State, Alhaji Ahmad Sajoh, confirmed that the PDP stakeholders loyal to his principal met and asked Nyako’s first son and Sarkin Matasa Adamawa,  Commander Abdulaziz Nyako, rtd, to dump the crisis- ridden PDP in Adamawa, but declined to confirm if his principal would also dump the party.

Vanguard