Defection: What Dogara Said About Buhari, APC After Joining PDP In 2018

The former speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, has returned to the All Progressives Congress (APC), twenty months after he defected to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Dogara had dumped the APC for the PDP in September 2018, ahead of the general elections in 2019.

Following his defection at the time, the former speaker had publicly criticised President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC.

Dogara, at an executive meeting of the PDP, had described President Buhari as a failure and accused him of doing nothing for almajiris in his first term in office despite claiming to “belong to everybody” in his 2015 inauguration speech.

He had said, “The almajiris have seen through this fraud, this charade. The president has lost his constituency.

“We thought Buhari would choose to become the minister of education not petroleum,” he said.

Dogara’s unexpected return to the APC would come as a surprise to many. He had attacked the ruling party and accused it of failing to fulfill its campaign promises to Nigerians after leaving the party in 2018.

He said that even if the APC should give him its ticket to recontest his seat as the House of Representatives member representing Bogoro/Dass federal constituency, he would reject it.

“… even if you give me a ticket to work in a place, where my conscience is totally not in sync with; to be candid, I cannot function effectively,” Dogara had said after a PDP nomination was purchased for him by his supporters ahead of the 2019 elections.

The APC, in reaction, had dismissed him as “a paperweight politician who does not have much electoral value.”