El-Rufai’s Campaign Director Dumps APC

John Shiklam in Kaduna

Another Chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, Alhaji Jaafaru Abbas Ibrahim, withdrew his membership of the party wednesday.

Ibrahim was Governor Nasir El-Rufai’s zonal campaign director during the 2015 elections.

In a letter addressed to the APC Chairman, Kwabai A ward in Zaria Local Government Area, Ibrahim described the party as a sinking ship, noting that it has failed to deliver the dividends of democracy to the people of Kaduna State and Nigerians in general.

He said his remaining in the APC will be tantamount to committing political suicide which he cannot risk committing.

He accused Governor El-Rufai of allegedly jettisoning and abandoning the party manifesto and setting new personal goals and objectives, which according to him, are detrimental to the future of the party.

Ibrahim, a legal practitioner who was also appointed by the El-Rufai’s administration as the Interim Management Committee Chairman of Zaria Local Government Area from June 2015 to December 2015, maintained that “recent developments before, during and after the party congresses in the state are further confirmation of our fears that some of us are not wanted in the party, such that our continuous stay and in-house struggles and skirmishes had not only stagnated but rendered the party comatose due to the fact that the worst elements, crooks, swindlers as well as the most selfish have taken control of both the party and the government, making the future of the APC uncertain”.

According to him, “the state is mired in violence and people are being killed on a daily basis, criminality, rural banditry, cyclical atrocities between political classes, kidnapping and robbery are taking their toll on the lives and livelihood of citizens of the state rendering the constitutional provisions that the governor as the chief security officer should provide for the security and welfare of the people an empty rhetoric.

“Moreover, the Governor has woefuly failed to address problems such as unemployment, abject poverty, hunger and housing and deliver on its promises as contained in its abandoned manifesto”.

He said the: “The Kaduna State Government had since lost focus, commitment, zeal, determination, culminating in poor governance as a result of transparency, integrity, due process and accountability deficit.

“Our continued advise both privately and publicly for an improvement on both party administration and the state has been met with stiff opposition over which we have been called names in vituperative and unprintable languages.

“In view of the above therefore, it is obvious that APC in Kaduna state in particular, is like a sinking ship, hence every discernable mind has to scamper into safety as in this circumstances.

“I am not ready to commit political suicide hence it is with greatest regret that I have formally announce the withdrawal of membership from the party which we laboured to establish forthwith”.

Other chieftains of the APC in the state that have left the party include Yaro Makama Rigachiku, Isa Ashiru, Hon. Jagaba Adams Jagaba and Dr. Hakeem Baba Ahmed, chief of staff to Senate President Bukola Saraki.