Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar has officially resigned his membership of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
In
a letter he wrote to the APC, Atiku said that the ethics for which he joined
the APC had not been met, instead the party had backpedalled on all its
promises.
He added that an attestation to his
claim was buttressed in a letter written by a certain governor of the APC
accusing the leadership of the party of frosty relationships with those who led
the party to its 2015 victory.
Read
the full text of the letter below:
On
the 19th of December, 2013, I received members of the All Progressives Congress
at my house in Abuja. They had come to appeal to me to join their party after
my party, the Peoples Democratic Party, had become factionalized as a result of
the special convention of August 31, 2013.
The
fractionalization of the Peoples Democratic Party on August 31, 2013 had left
me in a situation where I was, with several other loyal party members, in
limbo, not knowing which of the parallel executives of the party was the legitimate
leadership.
It
was under this cloud that members of the APC made the appeal to me to join
their party, with the promise that the injustices and failure to abide by its
own constitution which had dogged the then PDP, would not be replicated in the
APC and with the assurance that the vision other founding fathers and I had for
the PDP could be actualized through the All Progressives Congress.
It
was on the basis of this invitation and the assurances made to me that I, being
party-less at that time, due to the fractionalization of my party, accepted on
February 2, 2014, the hand of fellowship given to me by the All Progressives
Congress.
On
that day, I said “it is the struggle for democracy and constitutionalism and
service to my country and my people that are driving my choice and my decision”
to accept the invitation to join the All Progressives Congress.
Like
you, I said that because I believed that we had finally seen the beginnings of
the rebirth of the new Nigeria of our dreams which would work for all of us,
old and young.
However,
events of the intervening years have shown that like any other human and like
many other Nigerians, I was fallible.
While
other parties have purged themselves of the arbitrariness and
unconstitutionality that led to fractionalization, the All Progressives
Congress has adopted those same practices and even gone beyond them to
institute a regime of a draconian clampdown on all forms of democracy within
the party and the government it produced.
Only
last year, a governor produced by the party wrote a secret memorandum to the
president which ended up being leaked. In that memo, he admitted that the
All Progressives Congress had “not only failed to manage expectations of a
populace that expected overnight ‘change’ but has failed to deliver even
mundane matters of governance”.
Of
the party itself, that same governor said “Mr. President, Sir Your relationship
with the national leadership of the party, both the formal (NWC) and informal
(Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso), and former
Governors of ANPP, PDP (that joined us) and ACN, is perceived by most observers
to be at best frosty. Many of them are aggrieved due to what they consider
total absence of consultations with them on your part and those you have assigned
such duties.”
Since
that memorandum was written up until today, nothing has been done to reverse
the treatment meted out to those of us invited to join the All Progressives
Congress on the strength of a promise that has proven to be false. If anything,
those behaviours have actually worsened.
But
more importantly, the party we put in place has failed and continues to fail
our people, especially our young people. How can we have a federal cabinet
without even one single youth.
A
party that does not take the youth into account is a dying party. The future
belongs to young people.
I
admit that I and others who accepted the invitation to join the APC were eager
to make positive changes for our country that we fell for a mirage. Can you
blame us for wanting to put a speedy end to the sufferings of the masses of our
people?
Be
that as it may be, after due consultation with my God, my family, my supporters
and the Nigerian people whom I meet in all walks of life, I, Atiku Abubakar,
Waziri Adamawa, hereby tender my resignation from the All Progressives Congress
while I take time to ponder my future.
May
God bless you and may God bless Nigeria.
Atiku
Abubakar
