A former Governor of Kano State and a leader of the All Progressives Congress, Ibrahim Shekarau, has said that there was no ‘agreement’ between the five Peoples Democratic Party governors that defected to the APC and his party to make them leaders of the party in their various states.
Shekarau, on a Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria Kaduna’s Hausa programme, Hanu da yawa monitored by our correspondent in Abuja, said there was no existing agreement with the G-5 governors and the leadership of the APC to become automatic leaders of the party in their states.
He challenged the leadership of the APC to produce such an agreement, saying that the governors could not lead the party in the states.
He noted that there was no meeting where such an agreement was reached that the defected governors from the PDP should be automatically made leaders of APC in their states.
Shekarau, who is also a presidential candidate of the defunct All Nigeria Peoples Party in the 2011 general elections, added that he wouldn’t have disputed the idea if it had followed the due process or if all the party leaders had met to agree on it.
“I challenged our northern APC chairman Bello Masari to tell us the time, date and at what meeting it was agreed that the said state governors should be made chairmen of the party in their states. Is it at a meeting of 35 party members which was never held or was it at a meeting of party elders?
“Our National Chairman, Bisi Akande, only went with a few APC governors to meet with some PDP leaders and now they are talking of an agreement. Let him (Masari) provide the copy of the said agreement to newsmen to enable the public to know the content of the agreement and where it was agreed upon,” Shekarau said.
The former governor, who expressed concern over the development, explained that before he and other aggrieved members of the party complained on the said agreement, he had sought clarification from some party elders who told him there was no such an agreement.
The Interim National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Lai Mohammed, however, said there was a subsisting agreement, to allow governors drive the process in the states.
He said, “We did agree with the new PDP governors that whatever rights our APC governors enjoy they would enjoy and prior to their coming, we agreed that governor in our states would drive the process and that the governors in the states would appoint interim chairmen.
“To that extent whatever our governors enjoy as soon as they became APC governors they will enjoy them and nobody can deny that.”