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From John Bassey, Gusau
The Zamfara State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has resisted an unreasonable move by former Senator Kabiru Garba Marafa to reduce the number of votes counted for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the 2023 polls in Zamfara come 2027, identifying him as a toothless bulldog.
This was contained in a statement issued on Wednesday, September 3, by Hon. Tukur Umar Danfulani, Chairman of APC Zamfara State, to journalists in Gusau.
According to the statement, the party chairman said that, as a political party, the APC in Zamfara has come across an interview granted by former Senator Kabiru Garba Marafa threatening to reduce one million votes tallied from President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s votes, which he claimed to have secured to win the 2023 presidential election in the Northwest for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and that he will stop the President from getting such votes in 2027.
“First, I would like to address that by telling the Nigerian public that, apart from being disgraced from the Senate by his constituents in 2019, he has not recovered from his dementia,” Danfulani said.
Even in the 2023 polls, where he made uncorroborated calls on the 2023 elections, it should be noted that Marafa could not even win his constituency in the same elections, let alone secure the votes, which largely came through the faith the electorate have in the party and in Matawalle, Yari, and other respected party leaders in the state.
Matawalle, the present Minister of State for Defence, served as the Coordinator for the Tinubu/Shettima Presidential Campaign Council for the whole of the Northwest and initially doubled as the Zamfara State coordinator, but seeing that the work would be overwhelming, suggested the Zamfara coordination to Marafa, which was reluctantly approved because he (Marafa) did not merit it.
Having lost everywhere, Marafa, who insisted he be given a high-ranking position in the government, began to torment the root of the party, fomenting one problem or another.
He sometimes used alliances with other troublemakers, who would also leave him immediately they discovered his selfish motives.
APC supporters in Zamfara have grown wiser and more loyal to political leaders like Matawalle, Senator Yari, and many others who carry them along, which is why the party won the recently concluded Kaura Namoda South State House of Assembly bye-election with a wide margin against the runner-up (PDP) without any input from the likes of Marafa, who tried to sabotage the APC’s chances of winning through anti-party manoeuvres that didn’t work for them.
It’s laughable that Marafa, who couldn’t win even his ward of Yandoton Daji or his local government of Tsafe or his central constituency, could boast of reducing one million votes out of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s votes of 2023.
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The question here is, from where will Marafa get these votes, because the entire Zamfara State votes in 2023 were not close to one million votes, except if he is going to use his bragging nature of how he did to Senator Ikra Aliyu Bilbis, saying that even his boys, such as Aliyu MC and Abubakar Doctor, can defeat Ikra, to the extent of saying even his vagabond Muzakkiru can defeat Senator Bilbis, and boasted that if Ikra defeated Muzakkiru, he would retire from politics, and he was defeated despite the conduct of a supplementary election in his constituency.
So, we, the people of Zamfara, know that he’s just a lame dog that can only bark but without any teeth to bite.
Marafa should know that the nemesis of his deeds in the form of betrayal and deceit will continue to haunt him, because even in 2011, he was sponsored by the same Yari he is now envying to win his senatorial seat, and the second attempt was met with heavy resistance from party leaders of his constituency, but with the intervention of the former Zamfara State Deputy Governor, Mallam Ibrahim Wakkala Muhammad, at the Presidential Lodge, Gusau, to consider and support Marafa, if not, he wouldn’t have won even at the primary election.
Let us put the records straight: what is expected from Senator Marafa during the interview is to tell the world how many votes he secured himself and that of his opponent in the last election before talking about reducing President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s votes while peddling lies and propaganda that are dead on arrival.
He knows that even his family will not follow him; that is why he has resorted to media campaigns to get outside sympathy, but he knows the people of the state have already concluded on him electorally.
We urge him to come to Zamfara and reassess his popularity among the electorate; we believe he will bury himself in shame.
His unguarded utterances are just out of frustration of losing the election and his inability to secure appointments in President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration.
Ordinarily, if not because he touched the President in his uncivilised manner, we would not have responded to a lower and rejected politician like him.
It is high time he shines his eyes and faces reality, as Zamfara APC is now formidable, united, and committed to winning.
Victory is on our side; no amount of media campaigns can distract from our achievements, as demonstrated in the recently concluded bye-election in Kaura Namoda South State House of Assembly constituency.
