Members of the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) in Zamfara State have for the first time, since the party lost its grip on the state in May this year, started making frantic moves on how to reclaim the state.
The party has held stakeholders’ meetings across the three senatorial zones in the state, our correspondent reports.
The meetings, according to the party’s zonal vice chairman, Alhaji Sani Gwamna Mayanchi, were convened to intimate the party members on the challenges ahead and to brainstorm on the strategy the party would adopt to maintain its relevance in the state.
In attendance at the meeting in Zamfara central senatorial zone, the first since the party vacated government house, Daily Trust learnt, were a former minister, Alhaji Aliyu Ikra Bilbis, ex-commissioners, council chairmen, women leaders, youth leaders and other stakeholders.
Before the meeting, rumour was rife that some top members of the party, especially from the central senatorial zone, had defected to the ruling PDP in the state.
However, the purported defectors attended the meeting, thus clearing doubts in the minds of many in the state on their loyalty.
The party members, Daily Trust observed, were still expressing their shock and displeasure over the Supreme Court verdict which declared the October 2018 party primaries null and void, thus declaring the PDP candidates in the state winners in the 2019 general elections.
The party, after the meeting, announced cash donations to various groups of party members as part of the moves to retain them and to upset the effort of the ruling party to woo them using financial inducements.
Unlike when the party seemingly made no difference in the political landscape in the state since former governor Abdulaziz Yari handed over the mantle of state to PDP’s Governor Bello Muhammad Matawalle, APC has now began to brace up for the 2023 elections in the state, observers said.
A former deputy governor, Ibrahim Wakkala Muhammad, who many people believed to be a close ally to Governor Matawalle, hasn’t defected to PDP yet despite his romance with the governor. Ibrahim Wakkala headed Governor Matawalle’s transition committee, despite being an APC stalwart.
In the same vein, the likes of Senator Kabiru Marafa and other members of the Group 8 (G-8) have not defected to PDP either. A former member of the state House of Assembly, Alhaji Mannir Gidan Jaja, who defected from APC to PDP had returned. Gidan Jaja said his decision to return to APC followed the refusal of his supporters to join him in PDP.
The zonal vice chairman of the APC in the state, Alhaji Sani Gwamna Mayanchi, told Daily Trust that the party is not an opposition party in the state because they did not lose an election. He said their mandate was handed over to the PDP by the court.
“Even those that had defected to PDP recently are fair weather friends who feel they can’t do without government. Let me tell you, we won election in 2011 without them, in fact we defeated them when most of them were in the then ruling PDP.
“After we formed government, they defected to our party and we received them and accorded them all respects and privileges and they have now returned to the PDP, so like I told you, they are mere fair weather friends,” Alhaji Sani Gwamna said.
