The All Progressives Congress (APC) Campaign Council in Kogi State, has accused the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of hiring people from seven neighboring states for the rally of its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, which held on Saturday in Lokoja.
Mr Kingsley Fanwo, Director of Media and Publicity, Kogi State APC Campaign Council, stated this at a press conference on Monday in Lokoja.
Fanwo said the PDP was dismayed by the poor turnout, and resorted to theatrics of rolling out expired individuals who had been expunged from the ranks of the APC for their unsavory deeds and characters as defectors and proceeded to canonise them.
Fanwo stressed that it was painfully obvious that the former ruling party had been fittingly reduced to a shadow of itself in Kogi over the last seven years.
He said, “We know that PDP brought a lot of people from seven neighboring states for the campaign rally in Kogi, because they needed to justify the dollars from the Dubai based presidential candidate of PDP.
”Talking about 148,000 defectors at Kogi rally by PDP is too ridiculous and not true.
”Even their diehard members who came in expectations of the usual largesse associated with the party in her heyday became dispirited when the lies started.
”The rest of our people went about their normal businesses, utterly disinterested in the hollow antics of a party that once wasted 13 precious years for them.
”The rally turned into a farce when people like the former Deputy Governor of the State, Elder Simeon Achuba and the former speaker of the state assembly, Rt Hon. Alfa Imam were repackaged for Atiku as Kogi APC stalwarts who were decamping to the PDP at the rally.
“What Atiku and his entourage might not have known is that this is the same Achuba who was impeached from office with ignominy by the State Assembly for gross misconduct during the first term of the administration.
”He (Achuba) rejoined his former bedmates in the PDP ahead of the 2019 general elections and failed to deliver even his own ward in that year’s presidential, legislative and gubernatorial elections.
”Rt. Hon. Alfa Imam is another has-been whose poor leadership pitched him in a running battle with his colleagues when he was Speaker of the State House of Assembly. At the cusp of being impeached, he pleaded to be allowed to resign.
”He was obliged and he too left office and our party in 2019. Shortly he decamped to the SDP, another rickety platform in Kogi State where his presence was as ineffectual as his departure was unfelt in the APC.
“We won the 2019 landslide without them. Since then, the two men have failed in their political self-delusions and have continued to fail,” Fanwo said.
He stressed that the PDP campaign rally in Kogi was a shadow of itself, saying the umbrella circus did not need anyone to tell them that Kogi people have rejected them.