The APC Campaign Council says Mr Dogara rejoined APC with the mindset of clinching its vice presidential ticket.
The All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) has accused the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, of working for the candidate of the (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, after allegedly failing to clinch the vice presidential ticket of the ruling party.
It also said Mr Dogara and some persons who met recently under the guise of APC leaders are impostors.
The council said this in a statement on Monday by one of its spokespersons, Bayo Onanuga.
Background
The APC presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, a Muslim from the South-west, was expected in some quarters to pick a Christian northerner as his running mate to balance his ticket.
However, the former Lagos State governor opted for Kashim Shettima, a Muslim and former Borno State governor, as his running mate.
Mr Tinubu had justified the choice of Mr Shettima as a matter of competence.
Since the announcement of Mr Shettima as running mate, Mr Dogara and some other Christian Northern APC leaders, including a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal, and Elisha Abbo, a senator representing Adamawa North, have openly expressed opposition to the ticket.
Perhaps, to address the grievances of Christians, Mr Tinubu appointed Governor Simon Lalong of Plateau State, a northern Christian, as the director general of the PCC.
Dogara has lost his mind
Mr Onanuga stated that the former speaker defected to the APC with the mindset of clinching its vice presidential slot.
He stated that Mr Dogara “lost his mind since he could not realise his self-imposed ambition to be on the presidential ticket of All Progressives Congress. On account of this, he has certainly become a reprobate and demagogue, delivering hate speeches and whipping up emotions, with the aim of setting our country ablaze.”
Mr Onanuga alleged that the former speaker and some persons who recently met under the guise of APC leaders are not members of the ruling party but merely represented themselves.
Those he said attended the meeting include a former minister, Mukhar Shagari; former Adamawa State Governor, Boni Haruna; former Kwara State Governor, Abdulfattah Ahmed; former Sports Minister, Damishi Sango; Senator Idris Umar; and two former deputy governors of Kogi State, Yomi Awoniyi and Simon Achuba.
He said, “they are all PDP members working for the presidential ambition of Atiku Abubakar.”
He added, “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 were representing 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 said.
Mr Onanuga said Mr Tinubu and the APC will win the election despite the position of Mr Dogara and others.
Efforts to get Mr Dogara’s reaction on the matter were unsuccessful. His media aide, Turaki Hassan, did not respond to our telephone calls to his mobile telephone.
The former speaker was originally a member of the PDP but crossed to the APC before the 2015 general elections. He later dumped the APC for the PDP in the build-up to the 2019 polls only to rejoin the ruling party in 2020.