26th July, 2020
Former Speaker, House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara has given reasons why he dumped the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to return to the All Progressives Congress, APC.
He said he dumped the party because of the mismanagement of resources by the Bauchi State Governor, Bala Mohammed.
In a resignation letter dated 24 July, 2020, to the Chairman, PDP Bogoro ‘C’ Ward, Bogoro Local Government, Dogara said he was writing to intimate the chairman of his decision to resign his membership of the party, which he said became necessary because the same reasons he and others fought hard in 2019 to effect change in the governance of the state were festering now.
According to him, he intended to bring these issues to the front burner once again as the fight to instil decent and egalitarian government in the state continued.
He the. asked: “Specifically, I intend to ask questions about the following: What has happened to LGA allocations since May 2019? What happened to our campaign promise to conduct LGA elections within six months of the PDP government?
“What happened to the N4.6 billion loan taken from a bank and paid directly into a private company’s account?
“Why are we segmenting salaries and why is payment of salaries of state workers outsourced to a private firm as consultants?
“Why are contracts inflated, awarded and payment of mobilisation done in violation of extant rules on procurement? Why are our highly revered traditional rulers and elders treated with odium contrary to the guarantee we have during the campaign that such will not happen under a PDP government?”
Dogara said he could not raise these issues and many more questions without a charge of disloyalty levelled against him if he were to remain a member of the PDP.
“I cannot also fail to raise these questions now, having raised similar ones during the administrations of Governors Isa Yuguda and Mohammed A. Abubakar, if I abdicate this responsibility on the altar of partisan loyalty, I will be the most irresponsible and unprincipled politician in Bauchi state,” he added.