A breakaway group from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and one of the groups that metamorphosed into the All Progressives Congress (APC), the new People’s Democratic Party (NPDP) has said that contrary to insinuations in the public domain, it is yet to decide as a group whether or not to leave the APC and return to the PDP.
The Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the APC and member of the group, Mr. Timi Frank who disclosed this in an interview with a radio station monitored in Lagos by our correspondent recently said at the expiration of the seven day ultimatum issued to the leadership of the APC and nothing was done by the party and President Muhammadu Buhari, the group would meet again to decide the next move.
While pointing out that their letter to the leadership of the APC was long overdue, he however revealed that the letter that was submitted by Kawu Baraje was endorsed by every member of the new PDP that joined the APC except for the Honourable Minister of Transportation, Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi.
When asked to confirm the identity of those that signed the letter, he said,” I don’t want to go into details, I don’t want to go into names but that letter is endorsed by our group and if you remember, Kawu Baraje was the National Chairman of the new PDP group that led every one of us to the APC. So, for him to come out and speak, you should know he has the mandate of the group. That is what I can say to you, he is not alone and it is practically long overdue and it is very important you know because we can say clearly that we have not been treated fairly in this whole programme since we started this programme”.
Reminded that the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki and the Speaker of the House of Representatives emerged from the group wondering if that was not enough, Frank retorted,” It is not enough; you remember the circumstances of how the Speaker and the Senate President emerged against the wish of the party, it is not that the party willingly gave them that position, they fought to get that positions themselves with the help of Nigerians and with the help of the senators and members of the National Assembly. So, it wasn’t an effort from the leadership of the party per se.
“We were expecting to be participating in all inclusive government that will take a lot of our members but if you can see and go to the record of those of us that joined from the new PDP to today in this whole programme, you can see the only two beneficiaries that we can identify as at today. I can tell you that minus Rotimi Amaechi and Senator Aisha Alhassan, these are the people that I can identify right now that we know that came from our group that has benefited. There are a lot of us who expected more but you can see today, just the way the letter was stated, it is not the same with the case of those from CPC, it is not the same case for those of them from ANPP and so on.
“We all thought we came with equal capacity to the table, you can remember, we came in with five governors, we came in with former Vice President Atiku Abubakar then, we came in with more members of the National Assembly…So, I thought that at the end of the day, I think that we are not comfortable with the way we are being treated. You can see even within the APC, those that have been around”.
On why they waited until now to write the letter, he opined,” We patiently waited, we thought maybe things will change, we thought maybe they will realize that we have not treated those that came from the new PDP well, we were just taking time to be patient and I can tell you clearly, even for my own case, you can remember when I became the Deputy National Publicity Secretary, I was meant to be the acting spokesperson of the party when Alhaji Lai Mohammed left.
“We believed that they must just respect the seven days ultimatum, we must go back to the table if we must look for a forum to continue with all of this, we must go back and renegotiate, we must go back to discussion, we must talk as politicians, we must look at all the options again because you can remember, when we started all these whole process, we didn’t put anything on the table but right now we believe from our group that we must be treated equally with CPC, ACN and ANPP and we are not doing this with any intention in our mind to run anybody down or to make sure APC is not re-elected”.
He however denied the allegation that the group was confrontational in its dealing with the party saying that they had kept quiet for too long and that the letter was meant to have come out long time ago but they agreed within themselves that they must wait and see whether the party leadership would change their mind.
“You can see from day one what happened to the Senate President. The Senate President has not been able to sleep right from his election to date”.
On whether they were talking to former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar on this development, he said,” Former Vice president, as you can see, he left out of anger, he left because he believe he was not ready to be patient with all of these. So, he has left us long time ago. So, as at today, we are not putting him into what we are doing because he is now a member of PDP while we are still members of the APC. So, whatever we are doing now, we are doing it as members of APC because we believe we are equal stakeholders of this party”.
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