More Woes For Atiku As Sokoto PDP Campaign Coordinator Dumps Party

The crisis hitting the presidential ambition of Atiku Abubakar, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has worsened as the party’s campaign coordinator in Sokoto State, Murtala Abdulkadir DanIya, on Friday dumped the party.

This is coming after the Chief Spokesman of the Tinubu/Shettima presidential campaign council, Festus Keyamo, sued the PDP candidate alongside the Economic and Financial Crime Commission, EFCC, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, ICPC, and the Code of Conduct Bureau, CCB, on Friday over failure of the anti-graft agency and allied agencies to arrest and prosecute Atiku.

The APC is seeking Atiku’s prosecution in relation to allegations of “open corruption” levelled against him by his erstwhile media aide, Michael Achimugu.

Achimugu alleged that Atiku corruptly enriched himself while he was Vice President.

Atiku has denied any wrongdoing and has said he’s a target of political rivals, and called the allegation a “blackmail.”

His National Support Groups across the country also suffered setbacks in less than 25 days to the presidential election over allegations of financial impropriety and poor management.

The group was on Thursday dissolved with the hope that it would be reconstituted.

Sokoto State, whose governor, Aminu Tambuwal, is the Director General of the Atiku/Okowa campaign, has been deemed Atiku’s to lose.

Various opinion polls have shown it has leaned favourably towards the former Vice President.

DanIya, who is the Sokoto North Local Government campaign coordinator for Atiku/Okowa campaign council, announced his resignation from the campaign and PDP in a letter dated January 13, 2023, citing lack of internal democracy.

In the letter of resignation addressed to the PDP Chairman, Maganjin Gari ‘B’ ward, Sokoto state, he said, “I hereby resign my membership of your party, the PDP, due to irreconcilable differences, especially the way and manner the party is carrying out it duties towards the good people of Sokoto state.”

It was gathered that DanIya’s resignation has come as a shock to the party as he is also the state treasurer of PDP.

However, the state Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Hassan Sahabi Sanyinnawal, told THE WHISTLER that he could not confirm the development as no letter to that effect had been received.

He said, “As a party, we didn’t receive any letter or information from him. We are just hearing it as a rumour.

“Officially as a party, we didn’t receive any letter from him, we didn’t receive any information from him,” he reemphasied.

He said if he indeed wrote any letter, “it has not come to the party.”

Probed if he or anyone close to him had called to confirm from Danlya if they were concerned about his resignation, he said, “No, I didn’t.”

Asked if his failure to do that meant Danlya was not important to the party and they could do without him, he said “No, as I’m talking to you, I can’t say if he is not with the party because he didn’t officially inform us.”