A founding member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and a former member of the House of Representatives, Farouk Aliyu has disagreed with the national chairman of the party, Dr. Umar Ganduje for saying that the country is better off as one-party state.
The APC chieftain, who spoke on Arise TV on Tuesday noted that one-party state is not good for democracy, stressing that the comment is a personal opinion of Ganduje and not the position of the party.
He said, “Definitely one-party state is not the best for us. In APC we’re not looking into one-party state. What Ganduje said is his personal opinion. It’s not the opinion of the party, even though he’s our leader but that’s not the posiotion of APC to desire one-party state.
“However, I want you to note that it’s not our fault if anybody runs to APC. We’ve been in opposition, we stayed in opposition until when we found ourselves in the ruling party. With all the intimidations and so on and so forth. If the members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) or other parties decide to join us, we won’t stop them. But, honestly having everybody join APC is not good for our democracy. Also democracy gives people the right to say, since all of you are in APC, we won’t vote for APC, we’ll vote for any other party. So, let this not scare anybody because the people will decide who to vote for. Whether 90 percent of Nigerians decide to join APC in terms of numbers but when it comes to voting, the people will decide who to go with.
“If the Nigerian public doesn’t accept the gale of movement, they have the right to decide when elections come. When the other person spoke about intimidation, can you say, the former governor of Kebbi State was intimidated? This was the person who defeated a sitting governor, our sitting Governor of Kebbi State was contesting to be a senator and he defeated him. Now he has decided to join the APC. So, if you look at all these, what is our fault? The fault is that they’ve accepted what we’re doing as a government.
While speaking on the reaction of former Governor Nasir El-rufai to the APC, of which he was a founding member, Aliyu said, “If he were a minister he wouldn’t be talking like this. We’re yet to see this kind of elite walking away from the largess of office. As far as I’m concerned I feel that El-rufai is ranting simply because he lost out.
He said that the former APC chieftain shouldn’t pull down the roof because he lost out.