President Muhammadu Buhari and the leadership of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) are working round the clock towards ensuring that Senate President Bukola Saraki; Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State; Rabiu Kwankwaso, senator representing Kano Central, their loyalists and other bigwigs of the ruling party do not decamp to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
According to party sources, this necessitated the setting up of the APC Reconciliation Committee by President Buhari.
With dwindling goodwill from the six geo-political zones of the country, if President Buhari is seeking reelection in 2019 he must arrest the drift of many chieftains of the party who are being wooed by the opposition parties, especially the PDP, analysts said.
In a chat with DAILY INDEPENDENT on Wednesday, a member of the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) said the president decided to act fast to forestall a mass defection to the major opposition party by setting up the reconciliation committee headed by Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, a national leader of the party and former governor of Lagos State.
Given the influence of Saraki at the National Assembly and in Kwara State and also considering Kwankwaso’s influence in Kano, our source said “the president and the party feel there is an urgent need to move in and pacify the aggrieved members from leaving the party either for the PDP or the various coalitions springing up in the country.”
He cited a recent poll by an online news medium where many respondents voted that both Saraki and Kwankwaso are on their way out of the APC.
Our source said “after considering this report and the body languages of the aforementioned politicians, the president and his team felt there is a need to meet with aggrieved politicians, iron things out and bring them to the level they were before the 2015 presidential election”.
“Already the opposition is latching on to the face-off between Kwankwaso and Ganduje in Kano and daily they are telling the senator that he should dump the APC and return to the PDP. They keep telling him the APC is an ungrateful party that didn’t appreciate the massive votes he delivered in the 2015 election. We know all these and even though Kwankwaso himself has denied plans to join the PDP, we do not want to take things for granted.
“On the part of the Senate president, we are also aware that a lot of people are trying to drag him away from the APC. First, is his original party, the PDP. They have been on his neck since his ordeal began following his emergence in 2015. They later intensified their efforts after the Supreme Court judgment that settled the two years crisis within their party and they became emboldened that Saraki will join them after their national convention in December.
“While we believe the Senate president who has repeatedly said he will not dump the APC, we are, however, surprised reading the comment of one of his men, that is Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed of Kwara, who recently said they are ready to join the PDP once the people of the state give them the go-ahead.
“To us in the APC, we believe it is a clear signal that all the rumours about Saraki and his supporters rejoining the PDP may be real after all. Also, if you consider the protest by the youths and leaders of Kwara PDP that Saraki may hijack the party’s structures if he returns, then you will know that the plot is real and that is why the president and the party leadership decided to act fast by setting up the reconciliation committee. We believe all will be fine at the end of the day”.
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