Yari, Marafa want APC to lose Zamfara in 2023 – Shinkafi

• ‘It’s figment of your imagination’

One of the All Progressives Congress (APC) leaders in Zamfara State, Dr Sani Shinkafi, has alleged that a former governor of the state, Abdulaziz Yari and Senator Kabiru Garba Marafa are sabotaging APC’s chances of retaining power in the state in 2023. 

Shinkafi, a former national secretary of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), in a statement, said the duo want a repeat of the 2019 governorship election scenario where the Supreme Court ruled against the party that it did not produce valid candidates for the elections. 

Marafa had conducted parallel congress in the state last Saturday and later addressed a press conference on Monday in Abuja, where he picked holes in the way the Governor Mai Mala Buni leadership of the party was handling its affairs and threatened court action, while Yari boycotted the ward congress held in the state.

But in a statement on Tuesday, Shinkafi said the congress conducted by the Marafa-led faction had no legal backing and was unconstitutional.

“Our ward congresses were genuine and constitutional. There was no parallel ward congress apart from the one organized by the recognized party structure in the state,” Shinkafi said. 

But reacting, the spokesman to Senator Marafa, Dr. Mika’ilu Barau, said Shinkafi is new in the party and did not have enough space to be the custodian of what the party should be, compared to Yari and Senator Marafa who have formed and nourished the party to the level it now is.  

“So these are actually fallacies and figment of Mr. Shinkafi’s imagination. He is one of the political prostitutes I have known around the states. He just left APGA and joined the APC and he now claims to be a chieftain of the party and even aspires to contest for a national position.

“If that is what will make democracy better for Nigeria, then let it be because these illegalities are the trends in managing the affairs of political parties,” he said.