BY OUR CORRESPONDENT
After a lot of innuendos and criticism of the All Progressives Congress, APC of which he was a founding member, Senator Shehu Sani has finally bid the party goodbye. His group, Mataimaki Maiyashi for Akida is one of the two groups that announced at a press conference Friday that they were leaving the ruling party, which has been enveloped with crisis of recent. The other group is Jaafaru Ibrahim for Restoration.
Though they did not give any hint about the new party they were going into, the two groups will certainly provide a formidable opposition to the APC in Kaduna State.
The announcement was not really a surprise. Sani has been consistent in complaining that the APC had not been faithful to its campaign promises. He and some other leaders of the party in the state had been at loggerheads with Governor Ahmed el-Rufai, who at some point was accused of sending a squad to demolish the building housing the secretariat of the faction led by Sani and Senator Suleiman Hunkuyi.
But before the conflict reached a head there was a time it appeared that the two arrowheads were going to bury the hatchet.
But no sooner reports of truce had been announced that both sides started another open disagreement. The schism developed into a gauge, such that the Segun Oni team which visited Kaduna to reconcile the warring factions could not make a headway. Sani believed that while the committee was fair, the national leadership at that time, under John Odigie Oyegun, was not sold on peace.
Since then the two factions had maintained their extreme positions. Thus leading to a total breakup on Friday. And to underscore the fact that the movement was not arrived at overnight, Sani had said recently that Adams Oshiomhole’s (new national chairman of the party) attempted reconciliatory effort came too late. Though he was not at the press conference, addressed by Mataimaki Maiyashi , the senator’s signature was long appended on the move.
For instance, Maiyashi said that apart from failing to deliver on its campaign promises, the the two groups are convinced that the APC “is incapable of accommodating and responding to well-meaning dissent, criticism and demands for inclusiveness and internal democracy.” Those have the planks on which a line was drawn between him and el-Rufai on one hand and the party leadership on the other.
However, a statement credited to Sani, hours after the press conference said he has not renounced his membership of APC.
Details later…….