The Kano State Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, Shehu Sagagi, has advised the party’s leadership to do everything possible to persuade ex-Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso not to defect from the party.
According to Sagagu, given Kwankwaso’s “strong political structure,” his exit from the PDP at this time would spell doom for the party.
Sagagu said, “I am advising the PDP to have a dialogue with Kwankwaso because if they allow him to defect, it will not augur well for the PDP and its entirety.”
The Kano State PDP chair spoke on Thursday during the visit of the presidential campaign team of a former Senate President and chieftain of the PDP, Bukola Saraki, to Kano.
The team was led by the Director, Bukola Saraki Presidential Campaign Directorate, Prof Iyorwuese Hagber.
Meanwhile, speaking to journalists in Jigawa State on Friday, Hagber said the lives of Nigerians had worsened under the rule of the All Progressives Congress.
He blamed the emergence of the APC government in 2015 on what he described as internal wrangling in the PDP at the time.
He said, “The PDP weaknesses, internal wrangling, and misunderstandings amongst our top nurtures, opened doors for the APC to come to power, which today we are paying dearly for it.”
He said the PDP was now ready and determined to reconcile its differences and recapture power from the ruling APC in the next one year.
“We are having a President in Bukola Saraki where education matters, where there would be justice and fair play, under the government.
“The APC wouldn’t have come to power if the PDP didn’t break its ranks and allowed internal problems to bedevil it. That is why I want to enjoin all the other groups that want to contest the presidency to support Saraki’s presidential ambition.
“Absolutely, the APC had no agenda to run the country when they took over power. That is why nobody is safe and nobody is celebrating Nigeria because we’re the poorest country now,” he said.
‘Katsina facing insecurity, many out-of-school children’
Meanwhile, a lobby team canvassing for Saraki to emerge the President in 2023, declared on Friday that Katsina State had challenges of insecurity and out-of-school children.
This, it said, was despite the fact that the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), was from the state which was also governed by his party, the APC.
The Saraki Contact and Advocacy Council which was led by Hagher, a former Minister of State for Power and Steel, declared this in Katsina during a meeting with the delegates of the Peoples Democratic Party.
Hagher, who addressed the delegates at the PDP Secretariat in Katsina, assured them that Saraki, as Nigeria’s president, would “wipe away the sorrows and pains of people of Katsina State that APC has subjected them to.”
He urged the PDP delegates to ensure that the ex-Senate President emerged as the party’s candidate in the 2023 presidential election.
He said, “Bukola Saraki is an extension of late President Yar’adua. We need somebody who has courage because Nigerians have suffered so badly. Katsina State alone has suffered more than most states in this country because your future is compromised.
“Loans have been taken that your great-grandchildren will have to pay, yet these children are not in school. Katsina State has the second-highest number of children out of school in Nigeria at the time when APC is in government. What are they doing?”
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