A significant number of All Progressives Congress (APC) members from Northern Borno shifted to the Labour Party (LP) on Friday, only two weeks before the 2023 general elections.
At a funfair in Maiduguri on Friday, Ishaku Yakubu, the interim secretary of the Labour Party in Borno State, greeted the defectors there. They were defined by him as Zulum supporters who defected to the Labour Party from the All Progressives Congress.
Yakubu assured the decampees that they would not regret joining the Labour Party by asserting that “everyone has equal rights in the LP,”
He asserted that “in the Labour Party, there is no discrimination, we are all equal, and you who joined today are equal in status to we are. We are a single, united family.”
To help the Labour Party defeat the APC in this year’s general elections, he asked all disgruntled APC and PDP members in Borno State to join the LP.
The decampees’ leader, Modu Gana Gudumbali, said they joined the Labour Party because the APC had caused hardship for Nigerians. He announced their support for Peter Obi, the Labour Party’s presidential candidate, as well as Yusuf Datti Ahmed, his running mate, and Captain Ibrahim Kadafur, the party’s candidate for governor of Borno.
“We were loyal to our former boss Governor Zulum, but we are not gaining anything in that government because the APC are not ready to listen to us, they are not given us room to know our problems in Northern Borno, particularly Gubio, Mobbar, Abadam and Guzamala.
“Five thousand decampees including myself have defected to Labour Party. amongst us include stakeholders such as Mustapha Kaka Gubio, Modu Mala APC, Isa Gabchirima, we are all well known by the Governor as hitherto strong supporters of the Apc”.
“The ruling All Progressives Congress had sacked many teachers in Borno, look at issues of naira swap, many Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs including myself now don’t have something to eat, no security, no electricity.
“As far as I am concerned, there is no other candidate who has come up to offer what Obi can offer to the people of Nigeria.
“We want government that will be run by the patriotic people not by social media propaganda” he said.