Niger APC Sets up Reconciliation Committee

* Dismisses claims its members plan to defect to PDP

Laleye Dipo in Minna

The Niger State chapter of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has set up a reconciliation committee that will meet with aggrieved party members following the conduct of the primary elections that threw up the party’s candidates for next year’s election.

This is just as the party also dismissed claims that one of its aspirants for the governorship seat has completed arrangement to defect to the opposition Peoples Democractic Party (PDP).

The state Secretary of the party, Alhaji Ibrahim Khalid, told newsmen in Minna on Monday that the 10-man reconciliatory committee is headed by a one time Minister of State for Solid Minerals and chieftain of the party, Alhaji Abubakar Bawa Bwari, with Mr Ibrahim Manko as Secretary.

According to Khalid, the governorship candidate, Alhaji Umar Mohammed Bago, and the Chairman of the party, Alhaji Zakari Jikantoro, have individually been meeting the aggrieved aspirants that lost out in the primary elections with a view to making them accept the situation as an “Act of God”, pointing out that their efforts have also yielded fruitful results.

“Let me inform you that the committee has made tremendous progress in its assignment. The candidate and the party chairman have also reached out to those concerned, everything is going on smoothly,” he said.

He dismissed as “mere rumour” the claim that one of the governorship aspirants, Alhaji Mohammed Idris Malagi, has completed plans to pitch tent with the PDP, saying the rumour is without any foundation.

According to the party’s scribe, Malagi “is fully in the APC, he is not going anywhere”, adding that the visit to the aspirant in his Abuja residence was just for fraternisation.

Khalid also took a swipe at the PDP, saying the party has not been able to overcome its crisis which engulfed it over two years ago which has been complicated by the conduct of the governorship primary election.

“A party that is still in court over the outcome of the primary election should be concerned with putting its house in order instead of poking its ugly nose into the affairs of another party,” he said.

The secretary boasted that the APC is intact and will win the 2023 governorship election “in a landslide manner” because “all our candidates are grassroots people, they are liked by the electorate, it is the people that elected them unlike the cash and carry of the other party”.

“Our elected representatives from the governor to our three senators and other representatives are doing very well. They have been representing the state well,” he stated.