Dogara is an Imposter, No Longer an APC Member – Tinubu

Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a presidential candidate for the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, has called Yakubu Dogara, a former speaker of the House of Representatives, and Mr. Babachir Lawal, a former secretary to the government of the federation, and the group they represent, a gang of imposters.

Additionally, he stated that Dogara is no longer an APC member and cannot be regarded as speaking on behalf of any APC members.

In response to the outcome of a meeting with some Northern Muslim groups that Dogara and Lawal had called for over the weekend, Tinubu stated that they had decided to collaborate with their Muslim counterparts in the North to support one of the other presidential candidates to defeat the APC’s Muslim-Muslim ticket.

As Senator Abdullahi Adamu, the party’s national chairman said, the APC offers Nigerians new hope. President Muhammadu Buhari said yesterday during the inauguration of the party’s women’s campaign team that there is no other option for the party in 2019.

This occurred on a day when new information about the motive behind Tinubu’s decision to pass on Dogara or Lawal as his running mate surfaced.

“Dogara has lost his mind since he couldn’t realise his self-imposed dream to be on the presidential ticket of the APC,” said Mr. Bayo Onanuga, director of media and publicity at the Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council.

Due to this, the former speaker, according to Tinubu, has unquestionably turned into a reprobate and demagogue who makes hate speeches and incites strong feelings to ignite a racial conflagration in our nation.

“The Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council is not surprised by media reports about a meeting of some Northern Christian leaders, who claimed to be members of our All Progressives Congress that Dogara and his ilk championed. The claim was fraudulent.

“Yakubu Dogara, the peripatetic and politically unstable politician who organised the meeting, left our party officially and unceremoniously weeks ago. And those who attended the meeting represented themselves, their selfish agenda, not Northern Christians.

“Before then, the former speaker had spearheaded a campaign of vitriol and hate against our party, using religion as camouflage, after he lost the vice-presidential candidacy to a better qualified Senator Kashim Shettima,” he added.

According to Tinubu, a close examination of the individuals present at the “unholy meeting” he called revealed that they were all PDP members posing as APC members.

“Among the politicians at the unholy consultative meeting were Mukhar Shagari, Boni Haruna, Abdulfattah Ahmed; Damishi Sango; Senator Idris Ahmed Umar; and two former deputy governors of Kogi State, Yomi Awoniyi and Simon Achuba. They are all PDP members working for the presidential ambition of Atiku Abubakar. “We were not surprised by the resolutions adopted. Our surprise was that the media failed to read through their smokescreen.

“The APC PCC wondered how the assembly of strange bedfellows hoped to foster unity and cohesion in our country when their candidate represents the antithesis of the goal, having emerged the greatest divider of our polity between the North and South.

“All Nigerians know that Atiku’s emergence as the PDP presidential candidate violated a power rotation code between the North and the South. His insistence on snatching and retaining what rightly belongs to another political region has triggered a crisis within his party, making him run from Port Harcourt to London to mend fences.

“We want to assure Dogara and his co-travellers fanning hate campaign against our Presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and his running mate, that they will fail spectacularly at the polls.

“From the engagements our leaders have had with men of all faiths, bigotry will not win next February election. What will prevail are the track records of our candidates and the solution-driven and all-inclusive progressive programmes the candidates offer Nigerians.

“Asiwaju Tinubu and Senator Shettima are going into this campaign with clear objectives to engage Nigerians across the socio-economic brackets on policy actions that will improve their lives. Our candidates will not exploit our country’s fault lines to win the election and sell religion as Kool-Aid,” he added.