Imam Jibril is the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chairman in Niger State. In this interview with Justina Asishana, the ruling party boss said contrary to rumors of mass defection of members to other parties, no genuine member of the APC in the state left the party for any other party. He added that the ruling party is intact and still very strong in Niger State.
IS it true that over a thousand members of your party, the APC in Mashegu and Agaie areas defected to PDP?
This is the second time a propaganda like this is occurring. You know we are in a propaganda period now. I can confidently tell you that APC members across Niger state are intact, even those in Mashegu and Kontagora. When I read it in the papers, I saw that they received the defectors in a secondary school which is one of the schools renovated by this administration as part of its whole school renovation approach. The so called defectors would have seen the school building and that alone would have told them that our party is working. Incidentally, Mashegu is one of our strongholds and we have invested heavily there. Also, the council chairman is working hard in the council. Due to their achievements and what they have contributed in terms of infrastructural development in the local government, the people are happy. So for them to say we did not do anything, so that is why people are defecting is a lie. No single person defected from APC and I challenge them to bring names. The names of the people we saw in the report were strange names. In fact, PDP does not have a structure in the whole local government, that is why they received the defectors in a secondary school. Why didn’t they receive them in their party office? The same goes for Kontagora, that was just another lie in order for the party to get popularity. If you are receiving defectors, the state Chairman is suppose to be there to, at least, give credence to their claim. But they didn’t even mention the name of the local government party chairman. They only mentioned the person that spoke on their behalf. So the so-called defection ceremony was false. It lacks details because all those that were supposed to make it credible were not there.
But why do you think the opposition is making all these claims of defection across the state?
The opposition have lost hope in Niger state. For a party that ruled the state for 16 years to be churning out lies is a sign of hopelessness. They did not achieve much while in power. Even when they were in government, they never received any defector from the opposition, so how come now that they are not in government, people are defecting from a ruling party to join them? This should make you know that such news is fake as we have verified.
What are you doing to keep your members intact?
We have a lot of programmes for our people. APC is known as a constitutional party. We are waiting for the ban on campaign to be lifted for us to roll out our activities. However, at the wards, activities are going on. In fact, the APC have been very active in all the wards and the polling units across the state. Incidentally, it is only APC that have polling unit executives in Niger State. You will be surprised that our population is well over 500,000. Our party is very strong in the state. So for the opposition to say 1000 of our members defected is false. 1000 is not a small number that you will receive them in a school. If the number is that large, I expected the state PDP Chairman to be there because 1000 is a big number. We take it as a political gimmick because our members are still intact. They should give us at least the names of 10 people who defected, ten members of APC.
So the PDP is no threat to APC in Niger state?
In politics, you don’t say anybody can’t pose a threat to you but the way they are going about it, they are seeking to gain cheap popularity and that is not the way to go about it. They should come for tutelage from those of us who have been in opposition for more than 30 years. Every political party have its own strength. However, our own strength is much more than theirs. If you have 40,000 executives to follow you and your opposition have zero, you will know our strength is stronger than theirs. If each of these 40,000 can bring 10 people each, that means we already have 400,000, so we are way ahead of them. It is simple arithmetic; their strength technically is weakened. We have more than 40,000 polling unit executives with records and database. If these executives can vouch for at least 5 people, that means we already have 200,000 votes and if they can vouch for 10 each, then it means we have 400,000. The party is rooted in the polling unit. That is how we know our strength, compared to a party that has zero polling unit executive.
Are you insisting none of your party members left for the PDP?
None. Instead, we are receiving a lot of decamps from the PDP and very soon, we are going to prove that. Not in the manner PDP did. We are going to prove to the whole world that PDP members are decamping en-masse into the APC in Niger state. We are not going to rush about it, when the time comes, we are going to make it happen. I can assure you that no single member of APC have decamped to PDP, not to our knowledge. Somebody can be sitting on the fence and calls himself a part member while he is not. Membership is different from supporting a party. That is the mistake people are making. Not everybody is a party member. Supporters can change direction anytime and any day. They have no stake in the party but a member is one that is registered and has cards to prove he is a member. You cannot go and bring people from the garage and claim they are APC members. The fact that a supporter no longer supports the party does not mean that we have lost our members. We want the PDP to give us 10 names of our members that defected and we will crosscheck it in our database. The public need to know the difference between the supporter and member. A supporter can be sympathetic to your cause but he is not registered. So when you say 1000 members defected in Mashegu, we should feel the impact.
What are your plans to further strengthen your party ahead of the 2019 general elections?
We are empowering the local government councils. We just distributed some vehicles to kick start familarization within the local governments. They will start going from ward to ward to educate the people about government programmes. We may not have done it the way the people want because of lean resources, but now, we are trying to gather information on what they need. Where we have deficiency, we will correct it and where we have done well, we will applaud ourselves. Those are the things we are doing now. When the ban on politics is lifted , we will start our campaigns.
