Date: 2016-04-11

A founding member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Alhaji Abubakar Kawu Baraje, ?has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to address some issues so that the party will not be factionalised.

Baraje, a former acting National Chairman of the PDP, was the one who announced the formation of a faction of the PDP in 2014, at the height electioneering campaigns ahead of 2015 election.

He advised the president to 'shine his face' and save the party from the hands of a few people who, according to him, thought they were more important than every other member of the party.

Baraje said this in Ilorin yesterday, while addressing journalists, where he lamented that the factors that led to the factionalisation of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its eventual collapse were gradually creeping into the APC. He alleged that impunity, lawlessness and divisive tendencies, which led to the downfall of the PDP now reigned supreme in the APC.

He said the aforementioned vices were being promoted by a few self-centred leaders of the APC, and admonished Buhari to start playing politics, so that the APC would not suffer same fate as the PDP. Baraje, who expressed reservation over the way and manner the ruling party was being run, noted that this had resulted in APC losing in many states where rerun elections had taken place.

"Most of the distractions were created by APC itself. For instance, the Senate president, Dr. Bukola Saraki, who heads an important arm of government, is not getting the necessary support from the party because a few people think they are more important than others."

In 2014, at the height of struggle for power ahead of 2015 general elections, Baraje was announced at a press briefing as the leader of a new faction of the PDP, known as nPDP.

The briefing was attended by the then governors of Kano State, Rabiu Kwankwaso; Sokoto, Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko; Rivers, Rotimi Amaechi; Jigawa, Sule Lamido; Adamawa Murtala Nyako; Niger, Babangida Aliyu and incumbent governor of Kwara State, Abdulfatah Ahmed.

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar was also at the press briefing. With the exception of Sule Lamido and Babangida Aliyu, all the rest, including their structures defected to the APC, a development that contributed to in the defeat of the PDP.

Baraje is a staunch supporter of the Senate president.