Salihu Tanko Yakasai, a former media aide to Abdullahi Ganduje, governor of Kano, has dumped the ruling All Progressives Congress.
Yakasai in a statement on Monday noted that he ceased to be a member of the party from March 21, 2022.
The statement read in part, “I have been a bonafide member of the All Progressives Congress party of Nigeria right from its inception almost a decade ago, precisely in February 2013.
“I travelled to different parts of the country to campaign for the party at the local, state and federal levels. I stuck out my neck, risked my life, gave my word and trust, and extended my belief in a party that we all thought in 2015 will usher in the leadership that will answer the cry of millions of Nigerians for good government, social stability, and material prosperity.
“By 2019, we reelected the APC again to manage the affairs of the country with the hope that its first term of four years was not enough to clear the mess it inherited from the defeated PDP administration.
“Regretfully, the trust and confidence we reposed in the APC (the government as well as the party) on two occasions (first and second terms) was betrayed. If anything, things became worse in the second term. The benefit of the doubt we gave the party in the first term vanished as we moved deeper into the second term.
“‘Failure’, our people say, ‘is an orphan’, especially when everyone recognises it as such. No one in his right mind wants to be associated with it. But in the case of the ruling APC, those in power do not see themselves as having failed Nigerians. On the contrary, they perceive themselves as performing excellently. They douse themselves in self-praise, self-congratulations, and self-centred behavior in public office. Many people in this country will rightly see their conduct as delusional. But the privileged ones in the office today hardly notice the reality surrounding the lives of ordinary citizens:
“No food, no potable water, no stable power supply, no jobs for the youth, no regular salary for public servants, no pensions and gratuity paid; no respect for government agreement with university teachers; no control over inflation, no security of life and property, and no defeat of the stubborn insurgency in the north-east, with petroleum theft in the south-south becoming an existential threat to the entire nation.
“In the interim, I will take a few weeks to further consult, reflect and digest the political terrain, before deciding on my next line of action.
“I cannot end this exit message, without thanking the Governor of Kano State, Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, OFR, for believing in me, and giving me a platform in his government for over five years, to serve my state as the Director General Media and Communications, and later as his Special Adviser on Media.”
In February 2021, Yakasai was picked up by the Department of State Services (DSS) after he criticised President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration on Twitter.
He had asked the president to resign from office following the abduction of hundreds of schoolgirls from Government Girls Secondary School, Jangebe, Zamfara state.
“Clearly, we as APC government, at all levels, have failed Nigerians in the number 1 duty we were elected to do which is to secure lives & properties. Not a single day goes by without some sort of insecurity in this land. This is a shame! Deal with terrorists decisively or resign,” Yakasai had tweeted.
Hours after the tweet, he was picked up by the DSS and questioned on “issues beyond the expression of opinions in the social media”.
Yakasai was released by the agency two days after he was picked up. He was thereafter sacked by Ganduje.
