Atiku dumps APC, calls it a dying party

Nigeria’s former Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar has officially dumped  the All Progressives Congress (APC), a party he addressed as a ‘dying one’ in his official decamping statement.

His statement released on Friday Morning reads;

Statement of resignation of His Excellency Atiku Abubakar (Waziri Adamawa) Vice President of Nigeria, 1999-2007 from the All Progressives Congress. On the 19th of December, 2013, I received members of the All Progressives Congress at my house in Abuja. They had come to appeal to me to join their party after my party, the Peoples Democratic Party, had become factionalized as a result of the special convention of August 31, 2013.

The fractionalization of the Peoples Democratic Party on August 31, 2013 had left me in a situation where I was, with several other loyal party members, in limbo, not knowing which of the parallel executives of the party was the legitimate leadership.

It was under this cloud that members of the APC made the appeal to me to join their party, with the promise that the injustices and failure to abide by its own constitution which had dogged the then PDP, would not be replicated in the APC and with the assurance that the vision other founding fathers and I had for the PDP could be actualized through the All Progressives Congress. It was on the basis of this invitation and the assurances made to me that I, being party-less at that time, due to the fractionalization of my party, accepted on February 2, 2014, the hand of fellowship given to me by the All Progressives Congress.

On that day, I said “it is the struggle for democracy and constitutionalism and service to my country and my people that are driving my choice and my decision” to accept the invitation to join the All Progressives Congress.

Like you, I said that because I believed that we had finally seen the beginnings of the rebirth of the new Nigeria of our dreams which would work for all of us, old and young.

A party that does not take the youth into account is a dying party. The future belongs to young people.

I, Atiku Abubakar, Waziri Adamawa, hereby tender my resignation from the APC while I take time to to ponder my future.