I Found Myself In PDP By Accident – Bafarawa

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.