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| Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar |
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar yesterday formerly
dumped the ruling All Progressives congress (APC).Atiku, whose decision did not
come as a surprise to many, is believed to be on his way back to the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP).
The former vice president, in a statement made available to
The Guardian in Abuja, yesterday, said he made the mistake of his life to have
joined the APC in the hope that it would adhere to the tenets of democracy.
Accusing the leadership of the party of high-handedness, he
claimed that he, alongside key members of the party, had been schemed out of
its affairs.
The Wazirin Adamawa also justified his resolve to dump the
party, saying it was borne out of the fact that the President Muhammadu
Buhari-led administration has not lived up to the expectations of Nigerians.
The statement reads, inter alia: “On December 19, 2013, I
received members of the APC at my house in Abuja. They had come to appeal to me
to join their party, after my party, the PDP, had become factionalised as a
result of the special convention of August 31, 2013, which had left me in a
situation where I was, with several other loyal party members, 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, 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 APC.
“It was on the basis of this invitation and the assurances
made to me that I, being party-less at that time, accepted on February 2, 2014,
the hand of fellowship given to me by the APC.” He continued: “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 APC…
“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 APC 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 APC had ‘not only failed to manage expectations of a
populace that expected overnight ‘change,’ but has failed to deliver even
mundane matters of governance…’
He added: “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 APC 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? A party that does not take the
youth into account is a dying party.
“I admit that I and others who accepted the invitation to
join the APC were eager to make positive changes for our country that we fell
for a mirage. Can you blame us for wanting to put a speedy end to the
sufferings of the masses of our people?
“Be that as it may be, after due consultation with my God,
my family, my supporters and the Nigerian people, whom I meet in all walks of
life, I hereby tender my resignation from the APC, while I take time to ponder
my future.”
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