At least 20,000 aggrieved members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), in Kwara State, have dumped dumped the party to form what they described as a “Third Force.”
The MM Event centre, venue of the defection. along Offa Road was full to capacity as thousands of APC card-carrying members burnt scores of brooms, which is the symbol of the party.
The Kwara Central Senatorial Chairman of APC, Abdulfatai Abdulrahman, flanked by other notables leaders, who addressed the decampees at the venue of the event along Offa Road in Ilorin, said their “New party will soon be unveiled in due course”.
“It is, however, disheartening, shameful and preposterous that Kwara APC cannot manage its success even at half time of its tenure in the saddle of governance in the state,” he said.
“The intra-party crisis has been on for long and unabated. The struggle for the soul of the party, which cannot be divorced from the 2023 political ambitions, has been the root cause of the lingering internal squabbles.
“The hopes and expectation of party members to reap the fruits of their collective labour have been dashed due to the self-inflicted and unwarranted crisis. This was not what Kwarans bargained for”, he added.
“The deliberate inaction to address the lingering crisis in Kwara APC has become obvious to all discerning minds that the agenda to deregister and refusal to revalidate thousands of members across the state was a grand plot that has the backing of the National Caretaker Committee.
“There is also evidence that the incumbent governor has concluded every arrangement to ensure all the elective positions from the wards to the state level work in his favour to ease his re-election bid as governorship flagbearer of the party.”
