Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, the Nigerian Ambassador to the Republic of Germany, has said that there was no acrimony amongst the stakeholders of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in Gamawa Local Government Area of Bauchi State during the just concluded election of the party officials in the local government.
He expressed utmost satisfaction over the process and smooth conduct of the congress in Gamawa, he described the exercise as free and fair one.
Ambassador Tuggar stated this on Saturday while interacting with reporters in Bauchi shortly after returning from Gamawa.
He explained that APC members in Gamawa local government elected the LG’s party officials through consensus saying that there was no rancor among stakeholders of the party in the local government over the choice of consensus candidates as provided for in the party’s constitution.
He said that his political antecedents over the years convinced him to prefer an election to a consensus as a method of deciding party leadership.
“For me personally consensus is not my first choice. I am coming from the background of opposition. We had direct primaries in ANPP and CPC. And Now am in APC.
“My preference is more inclined towards election where everybody gets to vote. Unfortunately, my party out of its wisdom opted for consensus.
“I am satisfied with it,” he said.
Ambassador Tuggar said that because of the transparency of the process of the congress, the people of Gamawa trooped out en mass to be part of the congress as though it was a general election.
“The crowd in Gamawa was very huge. It was like a general election. It went very well. All the eleven federal wards were represented.
“It was done under the supervision of INEC, the police and other security agencies.
“People were generally happy with the outcome because there was a change of leadership in the local government which might not be necessarily what went on in other local governments of the state,” he said.
He said that the APC in Gamawa local government took all the necessary steps to avert the reoccurrence of the events that caused the party member representing Gamawa Constituency in the Bauchi State House of Assembly.
“The change was informed by some of the setbacks we suffered in the recent general elections in the state. In 2019, we had a PDP governor, not APC.
“In my local government area, in particular, the state House of Assembly member who had defected in the first place from PDP to APC left APC to go back to PDP. These were parts of the reasons that informed the desire to have some changes in the party leadership,” Ambassador Tuggar explained.
Commenting on the chances of the APC to reclaim Bauchi State in 2023, Ambassador Tuggar said that it will not require much of an effort for the party to topple the PDP in Bauchi State owing to the poor performances of Governor Bala Abdulkadir Mohammed.
“In the case of Bauchi State, I don’t think it requires much of an effort given the poor performance of the PDP at the state level.”
He said that it behooves on the APC’s stakeholders in Abuja from Bauchi State to do the needful in line with the true ideals of the party, particularly at the grassroots level.
“We have to go back to the basics. We have to go back to what we were doing in the past, which is grassroots politics which is also geared towards ensuring fairness and equity in our processes, internal democracy and ensure that people are feeling the impact of governance directly.
“It is incumbent on us who are at the center of APC government to do the needful for people to know that APC is truly a progressive party,” he said
