APC, PDP Biker over Defection Claims in Kogi

Ibrahim Oyewale in Lokoja

The Kogi State All Progressives Congress (APC) Campaign Council has berated the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for parading the former state Deputy Governor, Simon Achuba, and former Speaker of the state House of Assembly, Umar Alfa Immam, as defectors from the APC in the state.

The council explained that the duo have ceased to be members of APC, adding that they had at one time or another left APC folds before the 2019 general election.

While addressing journalists at a press conference in Lokoja yesterday, Kingsley Femi Fanwo, director of Media and Publicity, Kogi State APC Campaign Council, assured the people that the ruling party would continue to consolidate on the gains of the good stewardship of the state Governor, Yahaya Adoza Bello. The council pointed out that the 13 years of the PDP in Kogi State was a colossal  loss, adding that APC has impacted positively on the people in terms of dividends of democracy.

According to him, “The rally turned into a farce when people like the former Deputy Governor of the state, Elder Simeon Achuba, and the former Speaker of the state Assembly, Rt Hon. Alfa Imam, were repackaged for Atiku Abubakar, as Kogi APC stalwarts who were decamping to the PDP at the rally.

“What Atiku and his entourage might not have known is that this is the same Achuba who was impeached from office with ignominy by the state Assembly for gross misconduct during the first term of the administration. He rejoined his former bedmates in the PDP ahead of the 2019 general election and failed to deliver even his own Ward in that year’s presidential, legislative and gubernatorial elections.

“Rt Hon. Alfa Imam is another ‘has-been’ whose poor leadership pitched him in a running battle with his colleagues when he was Speaker of the state House of Assembly. At the cusp of being impeached, he pleaded to be allowed to resign. He was obliged and he too left office and our party in 2019. Shortly he decamped to the SDP, another rickety platform in Kogi State where his presence was as ineffectual as his departure was unfelt in the APC. We won the 2019 landslide without them. Since then, the two men have failed in their political self-delusions and have continued to fail.

“It soon became clear that the political jesters in Kogi PDP had deliberately lied to their Dubai-based presidential candidate and his hangers-on that all projects in Kogi State were done by them, so the poor man spent his time on the podium attributing the massive projects constructed by Yahaya Bello either to a man who left office over one decade before construction started on them or to the PDP administration in which he used to be number two.

“Even the pitiable sight of the immediate-past PDP governor of Kogi State craving for some level of attention did not dissuade the PDP from treating his tenure as if it never happened.

“Indeed, there may have been a method to their madness, for in reality, if one were to judge dispassionately, his tenure, like the one before it, cannot boast of any visible contribution to the wellbeing of the people, so it might as well never have happened.

“While the lies that Ibrahim Idris built everything that looks like modern infrastructure in Kogi State as insinuated at the rally, of course, a figment of the speakers’ fevered imaginations, it is a national embarrassment to the PDP that they failed Kogi people so woefully despite having so long to make a difference.

“We are on course to deliver Kogi State massively for the APC and maintain the legacy of the party in the state under the leadership of Governor Bello. We urge our members to remain peaceful, law abiding but continue to work hard to ensure that we set a record with our numbers in the February and March polls.