Former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, has returned to his former party the Peoples Democratic Party.
PDP’s presidential candidate and former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar received Dogara in Lagos on Monday.
In 2020, Dogara decamped from the PDP to join the All Progressives Congress (APC) upon which platform he won election in 2015 and was made Speaker.
Dogara’s decamping is coming barely 48 hours after he and some aggrieved northern APC leaders declared support for Atiku Abubakar.
This followed several months of political permutations as the Northern Elders Consultative Forum, including the Christian leaders in the All Progressives Congress in the North on Friday formally adopted Atiku.
Dogara said Atiku was adopted following the resolve of the Northern Christian leaders to work with their Muslim counterparts to adopt one of the presidential candidates in a bid to defeat the same-faith presidential ticket of the APC.
The development back then was announced to State House correspondents by the chairman of the APC Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Committee, Mai Mala Buni, who said President Muhammadu Buhari was happy seeing Dogara return to the party.
Dogara, and former President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, and some governors had left the APC for the PDP ahead of the 2019 general election.
In 2022, Dogara not only declared support for Atiku but decamped to the opposition party, after the Dogara-led Northern Elders Consultative Forum, said that the Muslim-Muslim ticket of the APC was a minus to the ruling party.
The Forum said it considered the existing structure of the PDP, capacity of the candidates, evidence of national penetration, religious and ethnic balance, among others to arrive at the decision.
It was observed that the APC and PDP are almost at par in terms of political structure, but the compounding albatross on the neck of APC is the “unfortunate self-inflicted divisive same-faith-ticket which cannot guarantee the desired peace, unity and cohesion in Nigeria, a decision that has been kicked against by a huge population of Nigerians.”
