Aggrieved APC members in Kwara burn brooms, plan new party

As the 2023 governorship election gathers momentum, thousands of aggrieved members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kwara State have dumped the party with a promise to form another one in the state to challenge the APC in 2023.

Those who decamped gathered in their thousands at Offa Road in the capital Ilorin to burn brooms, a symbol of the party.

Kwara Central Senatorial Chairman, Alhaji Abdulfatai Abdulrahman, addressed the gathering. He blamed the intra-party crisis in the state, which he said had lingered for too long, as their reason for leaving the party. Speaking further, he said their “new party will be unveiled soon.”

Abdulrahman accused Senator John Danboi and the National Secretariat of the party of doing nothing to address the maladies of the registration/revalidation exercise, describing it as “flawed with deliberate policies and grand orchestration to deregister and disenfranchise selected members of the party.”

“The deliberate inaction of APC to address this crisis in Kwara APC has made it clear 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,” he said.

Abdulrahman added that the number of those that have decamped stood at over 20,000, including local government party chairmen, women leaders, youth leaders, wards chairmen as well as other party stalwarts across the 16 local government areas in the state.