When an animal strays into an area controlled by stronger predators, it has to escape quickly or risk the possibility of irrelevance or loss of life. This scenario is trying to play out in the political miscalculations of Hon.Yakubu Dogara, former Speaker House of Representatives, since his ill-fated voyage last July from PDP to APC.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Bauchi State, yesterday announced that Yakubu Dogara was no longer its member. The chapter’s Publicity Secretary, Yayanuwa Zainabari rejected the former speaker at a session with journalists at the party secretariat, Bauchi.
At the session, Zainabari said: “Dogara is not a member of the PDP in Bauchi state. As far as we know, he tendered his resignation letter from the party to his ward chairman in July 2020 which was copied to the state secretariat.”
“Also, during the last by-election for the state constituency seat of Dass LGA in the State House of Assembly, he participated fully in the campaigns of the All Progressives Congress (APC) against the PDP. If he was a member of the PDP, would he do that?
“Just recently, we started seeing his posters on the street of Bauchi with the state governor, Senator Bala Mohammed with an inscription of 4 +4. What that portends, we don’t know but we are dissociating ourselves from whatever may be the reasons.”
Zainabari said Dogara voluntarily left the PDP without any cogent reason, noting that the party had gone to the court “to seek redress so that we will retrieve the seat of Dass/Tafawa Balewa /Bogoro Federal Constituency.”
He therefore called on political jobbers who had been trying to cause confusion in the state to desist from doing so, saying it would not allow anyone to rubbish what the party has done in two years.
Asked if the party would welcome Dogara back to its fold if he decides to stage a comeback, Zainabari said that he “is welcome, but he must go through the processes laid down in the constitution of the party because party politics is all about people.”
The PDP had gone to a Federal High Court in Abuja seeking for Dogara’s removal as a member representing it at the House of Representatives having left the PDP for the APC.