IN the wake of the leadership crisis presently rocking Bauchi State chapter of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), the State Governor, Mohammed Abdullahi Abubakar has said that his efforts at bringing all the aggrieved members of the party in the state in order to unite the front is yielding positive results.
The Governor stated this in an interview with Journalists shortly after the party’s State Congress which held at the Multi-Purpose Indoor Sports Hall, Bauchi, on Saturday, ended declaring that all wounds will soon be healed.
This followed the fact that members of the National Assembly from the State and the Governor have been at loggerheads since the party came into power in the state in 2015 while several efforts made by both the National and State leadership of the party to settle the disputes between the warring parties have proved abortive.
The Governor in the interview said that when he came on board, only three of the members of the House of Representatives was with on his side of the division, but he now has eight of the members with him.
On the boycott of the State Congress by the Yakubu Dogara-led faction, Mohammed Abubakar said that every one of them has a right to attend or not to attend stating that some of them sent their apologies for not attending.
He said: “As at today, there are 8 National Assembly Members who are tagging along with the Governor of Bauchi State. You have seen some of them here while those who have not come here sent their apologies”.
He added that “We are doing everything within our powers to bring everybody on board. When we started, there were only 3 (Members of the House of Representatives), but today, there are 8 and this shows you the efforts that we have been making.”
On the allegations that the Governor stopped other party members from contesting the State Congress so that he would get the party’s governorship ticket for 2019 with ease, Mohammed Abubakar said that “if that happened, this shows that I have the support of everybody”.
“If I can call someone who has bought a form to contest and I will tell him not to contest and he will obey me, then he is with me, everybody is with me then”‘ he added.
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The Governor said that there was no court order stopping the Congress in the state from holding and said that the suit instituted by the Speaker Yakubu Dogara led a faction against both the National and State Chairman was only done on the pages of newspapers.
“You don’t go to court on the pages of newspapers,” he said, “I am a Lawyer of 40 years standing, pick the Nation of today and read it, there’s a banner headline: ‘Dogara sues Oyegun’. When you read the main body of the story, you’ll discover that the case had been filed before the Federal High Court”‘ he added.
Mohammed Abubakar also said that “But the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court has not assigned that case to anybody. So there’s no case, there’s no process to be served on either Oyegun or on the State Party Chairman, and there’s absolutely no court that has stopped the conduct of these primaries.”
Meanwhile, the Yakubu Dogara-led faction boycotted the State Congress held on Saturday at the Multi-Purpose Indoor Sports Hall, Bauchi with only 3 Members of the House of Representatives of all the National Assembly Members from the state in attendance at the Congress.
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