Taraba APC set to resolve differences to win 2019 polls

Plans by the Taraba State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to take advantage of the upheaval within the state chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) may end up as an exercise in futility after all, following efforts of the new national executive of APC to reconcile the warring factions.

Already, a round table conversation involving the two factions have is being planned worked out to iron out issues that broke out after the just concluded state congress, which produced two parallel chairmen.

Leaders of one of the groups, Unity Group, confided in The Guardian that the squabble would be over soon, stressing, “we have expressed confidence the new national chairman and he has promised to intervene.”

The group said it has been reaching out to aggrieved members asking them to resist carrots being dangled before them by the PDP since the national leadership has assured that it would apply “justice and fairness” in handling the ‘cold war’ in Taraba APC.

The Unity Group, which is led by a former acting governor, Alhaji Umar Garba, comprises eleven out of the twelve persons showing interest in the governorship ticket of the party.

Conversely, the other group is under the control of the incumbent Minister of Women Affairs, Senator Aisha Jumai Alhassan.

However, spokesman of the Unity Group, Aaron Artimas, maintains that the purported inauguration of a state executive by Alhassan, “cannot not see the light of the day, because state congress was not conducted here in Taraba.”

He said members of Unity Group repose their “full confidence” on the newly elected national executive based on the assurances “we received from the party executive when we visited the national secretariat and we are calling on members, who are already planning to defect to stay back.”

Artimas said the two factions would soon “come together and together we will triumph in the coming general elections,” adding that the APC national chairman “believes in justice and fairness.”

He added that although a lot of aspirants are leaving no stone unturned to emerge the party’s governorship candidate, members of the Unity Group have agreed to put aside religious and ethnic differences to support any of the candidates that emerge at the end of the day.

While stressing that the national chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, has agreed to address differences between the two factions, Artimas urged party faithful to desist from taking the laws into their hands by eschewing acts capable of driving members to PDP.

He also pleaded with the Minister to desist “from desperate actions, especially trying to hijack the party structure,” remarking that that is capable of “thwarting the dreams of the party come 2029.”

On the identities of political bigwigs within the Unity Group, apart from former deputy governors, former Acting governors, former commissioners, serving members of the National Assembly, he said demurred, noting simply that the group “has all that is needed to take over the mantle of leadership from PDP.”

He said PDP “has in the past eighteen years continued to drag this state backwards,” and urged the two factions to give the national executive the much-needed cooperation to resolve the crisis.

Artimas added: “Our meeting with the national executive was very fruitful and we are very much certain that Oshiomhole and his team would right the wrongs in our great party.”

Even as she still lays claims to the inaugurated executive as the ‘genuine and authentic’ state executive, the Minister of Women Affairs, has also on her part extended her hands of friendship to the Unity Group.”