No fewer than 30, 000 card-carrying members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Gombe State, including a former Deputy Governor, Dr John Lazarus Yoriyo, a former gubernatorial aspirant, Alhaji Abdulkadir Hamma Saleh, a former member of the House of Representatives, Hon. Abubakar Abubakar BD, party executives at various wards and local government levels and others decamped to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Gombe State PDP Chairman, Major General M. A Kwaskebe received the decampees on behalf of the party leader and former governor of the state, Dr Ibrahim Hassan Dankwambo in an occasion at the state PDP Secretariat.
The Chairman said the decampees came at the right time when Nigerians were joining forces to ouster President Buhari and Governor Inuwa Yahaya from seats of power.
He said all of the decampees now have equal membership in the party irrespective of when they joined, and promised that their loyalty would be richly rewarded if they contribute to the success of the party in the 2023 election.
Speaking on behalf of the decampees, two-term deputy governor in the state, Dr John Lazarus Yoriyo and Alhaji Abdulkadir Hamma Saleh who spoke on behalf of the decampees from Gombe South and Gombe North Senatorial Districts respectively, decried the ruling party’s resort to lies and propaganda to cover ineptitude and lack of focused leadership.
They cited the APC government’s failure to live up to its election promises and it’s unwise policies that inflict hardship on the citizens as their main reason for leaving the APC for PDP.
They promised to work assiduously to ensure the PDP bounce back to power in the state and federal level.
Also speaking during the occasion, former Chief of Staff in the state, Alhaji Ahmed Yayari assured the defectors that they would be carried along in the scheme of things, stating that it is high time to join hands and rescue the state from misrule of the APC government.
In his remarks, former member representing Balanga/Billiri federal constituency, Hon. Ali Isa JC, expressed optimism that all elections in the state would be won by the party. He opined that the state’s electorate had gotten disenchanted by the APC’s poor performance in the state.
The event which featured the formal renouncing of their membership of their former parties by the decampees, attracted the presence of mammoth crowd at the state’s party secretariat.