A crisis has hit the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Zamfara state as Senator Kabiru Garba Marafa and his followers regrouped in Kaduna on Sunday night, announcing the revival of their faction.
The senator who represented Zamfara Central Senatorial District in the 7th and 8th National Assembly announced the reincarnation of his faction in protest to the exclusion of himself and his followers from the recent meeting of the APC in the state.
Recall that the two groups of Minister of State for Defence Bello Matawalle and Senator Abdulaziz Yari met in Gusau, promising to strengthen the party.
However, speaking with newsmen in Kaduna on Sunday night immediately after the breakout meeting with hundreds of his supporters who came all the way from Zamfara, he noted that there have been two factions in the APC running simultaneously since the Matawalle era.
He noted that the crisis rocking the party in the last six years was a result of interests from political heavyweights in the state, adding that the crisis led to the ruling party losing major elections in the state, except for President Tinubu, who won Zamfara in the 2023 presidential election, where he served as the coordinator for the Tinubu/Shettima campaign organisation.
Exonerating himself from the state’s crisis, he dispelled the belief that it was his faction that took the APC to court in 2019, explaining that the Zamfara APC conducted an illegal primary and went to court seeking the legality of the process, an action he said led to them joining the group in court before the supreme court judgement that awarded the whole state to the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP).
Marafa stated that the decision to re-establish his own faction came because Zamfara state APC cannot do without him, thus the need to assemble his disciples and mobilise for grassroots followership from the polling unit to the state level.
He lamented the spate of insecurity ravaging the state while stressing that the people are under siege as their economy and other activities are grounded as a result of the insurgency confronting the state.
“The essence of the meeting is just to see ourselves, congratulate ourselves, and commiserate with one another, especially over the unfortunate happenings in Zamfara occasioned by the insecurity that is ravaging the state, that is if it has not grounded the state.
“We witnessed the unprecedented fight in 2019 between our faction and that of the government of the day then. That was former governor Yari who led the APC to lose the whole of Zamfara state, but not like it was erroneously quoted that we caused the problem. No.
“The government of the day caused the problem because they are the ones that said, These are the who and who that must be fielded by the party for election. So, the only thing we did was say that we are not in agreement with that and that we are going to contest that.
“The election was held, and we were not satisfied. Again, as mistakenly believed by the people that we went to court, no. The government of the day went to court. I want people to get this very clear. The government of the day conducted an illegal primary and went to court to legalise the illegal exercise, and that was when we joined them in court to say no; they did not conduct any primary elections.
“That was the beginning of the crisis, and it went through the Supreme Court. Four days after the inauguration of the governors, the Supreme Court passed a judgement that annulled all the elections in Zamfara State and awarded the whole state to the PDP. So I want people to know that the only thing we did was to stand by our rights, and what happened happened.
“After it, there was realignment. APC said, Come, let us reconcile, and we did. We dissolved all our structures. That is the Marafa faction, and we affirmed the Yari faction. We did everything within our power to support the Yari faction over time. Then came the Mai Mala Bumi-led Executive that again handed the state over to the government of the day headed by Governor Mohammed Matawalle, and we went back to the trenches again.
“After that, there was another realignment again. That saw the political realignment that saw all the political heavyweights in Zamfara, and we all formed one big family and went into the election. But unfortunately, some people were not happy.
“They went into the peace accord half heatedly, and they sabotaged the whole thing, doing anti-party, and it happened that I lost the election, the governor lost the election, and our APC House of Assembly members lost general elections except for the wing that we headed.
“I was the coordinator of the Tinubu/Shettima campaign organisation in Zamfara. To the glory of God, we were able to convince people, and Tinubu won Zamfara state. Since that time, I have not discussed nor sat with my supporters, so after one year in office by this government, we deemed it necessary, timely, wise, and convenient now to see ourselves and commiserate with people who lost their loved ones. Those who were abducted and those released. Those that are still in captivity died, and so on and so forth.
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