Kassim Afegbua, spokesman of the
Reformed All Progressives Congress (R-APC), says the ruling party now lives in self-denial.
The R-APC broke out of the larger
party last month and many other prominent members of the party also defected to
the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Taunting the defectors, President
Muhamadu Buhari, had on Thursday, said God will continue to fish out bad eggs
in the party, but Afegbua said the party is only trying to console itself.
“Nobody is happy in the APC that
we have left. It is just a statement of consolation that okay, let us not show
to these guys that they have dealt us a great deal of blow, but I can tell you
we’ve given them uppercut and it would take a long time for them to recover
from this,” he said on Thursday when he featured on Politics Today, a Channels
Television programme.
“The APC as it were may be living
in self-denial saying that nothing has affected them and nothing will affect
them.
“If you say the senate president
does not have electoral value, good luck to you. If you say Governor Tambuwal
of Sokoto does not have electoral value, good luck to you. If you say Kwankwaso
does not have, good luck to you.
“But what we are saying is that,
these are persons when leaving the party, we saw their supporters and crowd who
also left with them. So the president may be consoling himself not trying to
expose the pain that he’s presently going through.
“And whether you like it not,
more members are going to defect from the APC and I can assure you more
senators, house of representatives members will defect, and majority that the
APC is claiming will go into insignificance.”
He said the APC is shoeing its
usual arrogance and dictatorial tendencies in a manner which the individuals
are not relevant to the political process.
“But we know that every
individual who is of adult age is a voter and we know that the vote should
count. If APC is boasting that they are going to make it in 2019, it means they
are going to repeat the barbarism and the crudity of vote buying that we
witnessed in Ekiti election.
“But at that time, they won’t
have 30, 000 policemen to take to every state. They won’t have 1, 000 DSS
officials to take to each state, and so to that extent, we will mobilise our
people to defend their votes.”
He said he would not expect the
APC to accept that the defections would affect them, but every discerning mind
should know that when people defect from the party, there should be a need to
critically examine things, take a stock and check how the defections will tell
on the strength of the party.
“Whether you like it or not,
those who have left were persons that were cultivated, invited by the
president, pleaded with, and promised all manners of mouthwatering promises
before they still refused to accede to those pleadings. Now they left, and all
of a sudden, they make a u-turn and say oh, this person doesn’t have electoral
value.”
Afegbua said Buhari’s popularity
rating has dropped and the Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP) is
already preparing its ground to work out modalities that would help to unseat
APC in the 2019 general election.
“This is the first time about
forty mega parties will be coming together under a coalition to design a way
forward— presenting one candidate that will confront whoever the APC is
presenting,” he said.
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