Embattled chairman of the Peoples Redemption Party, PRP, in Bauchi State, Alhaji Amadu Chiroma has confirmed that the party is currently enmeshed in crisis ahead of 2019 elections.
This was as his faction of the party rejected in totality the planned defection of an aggrieved gubernatorial aspirant from the All Progressives Congress, APC, Professor Ali Pate, to the PRP.
Speaking with DAILY POST in Bauchi on Tuesday, Chiroma stated that the PRP crisis followed his purported replacement from the party’s national office with Shehu Barau Ningi, who according to him, is an APC member yet to publicly declare his defection to PRP.
“I was invited by Balarabe Musa, former Kaduna state governor, in his residence in Kaduna then as PRP national chairman, who pleaded with me to resign my position as Bauchi state chairman of the party in favour of Shehu Barau Ningi, but all the 20 LGAs executive in the state rejected the move, culminating in the current crisis of the party,” he said.
The embattled chairman added that the situation was worsened by Ningi’s purported dissolution of 20 LGAs executives with an attempt to replace them with coordinators of Pate, the aggrieved APC guber aspirant.
He cautioned Pate to declared publicly his resignation from APC to PRP if he wants to contest governorship in the state.
“There is no way Pate will use his influence and force Ningi to make him the party’s candidate in 2019, even when both of them have not officially declared for PRP talk less of dissolving our existing structure,” he said.
Chiroma maintained that he still remains the party’s state chairman, stressing that he nurtured the party for 40 years, and wondered why Ningi is trying to smuggle Pate as the guber candidate through the back door and without due process.
Ningi, while dismissing Chiroma’s claims as fallacy, described them as an attempt to discredit the reputation of Pate.
He told DAILY POST that Pate was contacted by him and others to resign from APC and join the PRP, which they agreed
Ningi denied having knowledge of his replacement as the Bauchi state Chairman of the PRP by Chiroma.
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