•‘My grouse about party, not President’
Former Kaduna State Governor Malam Nasir El-Rufai is unhappy that the party – All Progressives Congress (APC) – he helped to form has left him stranded.
He, however, ruled out returning to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as an option, as according to him, such decision would amount to jumping from frying pan into fire.
The former governor, who spoke on a national television, hopes the APC would get its acts together for people like him to remain in the fold.
According to him, his grouse is about the party and not President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
He said: “I’m a founding member of the APC and I am still a member of the APC. But, I have concern on how the party is being run and I’ve expressed those concerns.
“Two years after, the party organs are functioning but the progressive ideals are not being pursued with any vigour.”
Expressing displeasure with the party, he said: “I don’t know what has gone wrong with the APC. All I know is that a political party functions well through internal democracy. But, in the last two years, the party has not met.
“There has been no conversation on the alignment of the government and the progressive programmes of the party.
“I’m happy to learn through a grapevine source that the party is finally going to have a national caucus meeting and NEC meeting.
‘I’m not leaving the APC, the APC has left me, and I am stranded and I’m not planning to leave politics. Sooner or later, I may find another platform to pursue the progressive values that I believe in.
“May be, if APC corrects its way, some of us may have to look at it again. But, for now, there are many of us that cannot recognise the party.
“I don’t know where I will end up, if the APC doesn’t come back to the basics. But, one thing I can tell for sure is that PDP is not a party I will go to.
“I have thought about that long ago and I have taken my decision. In fact, if anything, the PDP has gotten worse. Other parties, possibly, if the APC doesn’t sort itself.”
He said his grouse was not personal with the President but with the ruling party.
On his inability to serve in the government, El-Rufai said: “It is a misplacement of assumption that once you contribute to establish a government, you must get a pay back through appointment.”
El-Rufai dismissed the claim that he failed to make the ministerial list because the National Assembly declined to clear him.
He believed that Tinubu, who approached him to join the cabinet, changed his mind along the line.
The former governor said: “I had my plans. But, publicly, when President Tinubu begged me to serve in his government, after about two months of negotiations, I agreed that he should nominate me as minister, though I attached some certain conditions to that.
“But, I think along the line, it seems the President changed his mind. Please, don’t believe the story that the National Assembly rejected me. The National Assembly had nothing to do with this.”