Alhaji Saleh Zazzaga, North-Central APC Forum Chairman.
By Abdul Hassan
Alhaji Saleh Zazzaga, Chairman, North-Central APC Forum and member of the APC campaign council in the 2023 election, has said that President Bola Tinubu has been giving political appointments to the wrong and undeserving people from Plateau State.
Zazzaga made this known in a statement, while reacting to the rejection of Gov. Caleb Mutfwang’s expected defection from the PDP to the APC by some APC leaders from the state.
He urged the president to intervene in the campaign to draft Gov. Caleb Muftwang into the APC before the 2027 election, stressing that it was the only way to strengthen and consolidate the APC in Plateau ahead of the general elections.
The Forum Chairman noted that those opposing Mutfwang’s coming to the party are APC leaders who lack the capacity to defeat him in any election and are doing so because of their selfish interests.
According to the Forum leader, those who have been getting federal appointments from the state are neither those who delivered their polling units/areas nor worked for the President’s election in 2023.
Zazzaga noted, for instance, that even though the running mate of the APC gubernatorial candidate in Plateau lost his polling unit and ward to the PDP during the 2023 elections, he was among those rewarded with federal appointments.
The statement reads in part as follows:
“We want to inform President Bola Tinubu that he is making wrong appointments in Plateau State. We want to bring to his attention the glaring and unfortunate fact that those who worked for him are not being given appointments, they have been left stranded while those who did not even vote for him are getting big appointments at the national level.
“These people that are being nominated for federal appointments from Plateau State did not even win their polling units in the last election. In most of their polling units, the candidate of the Labour Party, Mr Peter Obi, won the election.
“What makes the situation even more unfortunate is that we are trying to bring a person that has capacity – in the person of Gov. Caleb Mutfwang – into the party but these same set of people who are feasting on what they did not work for are frustrating our efforts by taking different actions to block the governor from joining the APC.
“We are still calling on Mr President to intervene on this issue, because all our concern is for his second tenure. These people are not telling him the truth, they are deceiving him about the state of political affairs in Plateau State.
“We urge the President to check the results from all their polling units in the 2023 election to confirm what we are saying. He will notice that none of them delivered their polling units, talk less of local governments or even wards.
“The opposition won in all their areas. Instead of joining hands with us to woo the governor to join the APC, which will surely strengthen the party, they are busy frustrating the movement.”
“These people that are getting appointments did not vote for President Bola Tinubu in the last election. In fact, most of them are not even politically active – they lack knowledge of national politics. They have not even served as party delegates or in any other capacity. They are getting big federal appointments even when they don’t know anything about politics.
“We are also asking Mr President to warn these people to desist from frustrating efforts to get Governor Caleb Mutfwang to join the APC. We are pushing for Governor Mutfwang to join the APC because we need him to produce the six million votes we earlier promised President Tinubu from the North-Central.
“The President should call them to order because they are trying to block Governor Mutfwang simply because they want to contest election even when they know they don’t have the capacity to win. We don’t want any cracks in the internal affairs of the APC, that is why we are urging Mr President to intervene quickly.”
It would be recalled that the Forum has in the past two years been campaigning for Mutfwang to dump the PDP for the APC although some APC leaders in Plateau have opposed the move, and even recently passed a formal resolution at a party stakeholders’ meeting rejecting the governor’s prospective defection.
