Posted on: 08:49 Sat, 30 Jan 2016



A former Governor of Sokoto State and one time
presidential candidate on the platform of the
defunct Democratic Peoples Party, DPP, Alhaji
Attahiru Bafarawa, has said his joining the
Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, was by accident.

Bafarawa, a founding member of the All
Progressives Congress, APC, joined PDP
following some disagreements with the national
leadership of the party over control of party
structures in the seat of the Caliphate.

Speaking in an interview yesterday, the former
governor, however, said he had no regrets for the
decision despite finding himself in the opposition
at the moment.

Narrating his journey to the PDP, Bafarawa said:
“I found myself in PDP by accident. What I mean
by accident is that I was part and parcel of the
APC. I am a founding member of the APC. I was
forced to leave APC because of corruption in
politics in my state when PDP governors
defected to the APC. Corruption came into the
system along the formation of the party when
they said that the PDP governors were going to
join APC and I happened to be a victim.

We were
forced to hand over the party to my governor,
who was a PDP member. So my followers
insisted we must remain in PDP and I had to
work with them”.

He also claimed former President Goodluck
Jonathan found it hard to believe when it was
brought to his notice that he (Bafarawa) had
joined the PDP.

“He could not believe that because during the
days of Obasanjo, I had a lot of pressure to join
the PDP but I refused”, he added.

On how long he intends to be in PDP, former
Governor Bafarawa said for as long as it remains
convenient, adding that there is no difference
between the opposition and governing party in
the country.

“The APC is the same with PDP. I used to call
them PDP 1 and PDP 2 because almost many of
the people in PDP are now in APC and vice
versa. For instance, the Number 2 man in PDP
who ruled this country for eight years as a vice
president is now in APC. If you count all the
governors in APC, most of them were at one
time or the other were in PDP. You can say so
of at least two National Chairmen of PDP now in
APC”, he said.