Atiku suffers a significant setback as his North-East campaigner and a former gubernatorial aspirant of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Jamil Isyaku Gwamna, has defected to the All Progressives Congress with thousands of his supporters.
The Punch newspaper reported that the ex-gubernatorial candidate dumped the ruling All Progressives Congress in February 2022 to PDP, where he contested the primary election but lost to Muhammad Barde, the party’s candidate.
Gwamna was a top campaigner for PDP’s presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar, in the North-East, where he recently donated campaign office for the realisation of Abubakar’s mandate.
Announcing his defection along with thousands of his supporters on Friday in Gombe while chatting with journalists.
Gwamna, blamed internal crisis, poor leadership, disregard for rule of law within the party and disunity as reasons for his decision to dump the PDP.
According to him, the leadership of the PDP in the state had poorly managed affairs of the party which led to different factions within the party.
He said his political ideology is anchored on unity, inclusiveness, fairness and justice and “if those are not found in the party then there is no reason to be in that camp.”
Gwamna disclosed that the PDP cannot manage Gombe State with the crop of leadership it has that prioritises personal interest against collective interest.
He added, “In politics, internal democracy is very key and if you cannot find that playing out, then practising democracy on a larger platform such as governing the state becomes a big issue.”
Gwamna said that the APC is more organised in Gombe State than any political party and has managed its affairs in a more family-like manner.
He called on his supporters to mobilise grassroots support across the state to ensure that APC retains the state with a better voting margin than that of 2019.
