• Senate president keeps mum

Senator Abdullahi Adamu, representing Nasarawa West in the Eighth Senate, has described the “reformed” All Progressives Congress (R-APC), a breakaway faction of the ruling party, as a 419 group.

Adamu told newsmen at the APC headquarters in Abuja, yesterday, that Senate President, Bukola Saraki seems to be the brain behind the group.

He said no member of the new People’s Democratic Party (nPDP) benefitted from the faction like Saraki, yet, the senate president has allegedly been disloyal to the APC.

“He (Saraki) has benefited more than any single new PDP person and he seems to be the arrow head of this resistance of betrayal.

“I told you that the nPDP is fake. I told you these are the people who have got felony that they are hiding from, who want to use their positions in the party and the National Assembly as a veil to hide from the felonies they have committed.

“And, the whole thing they are fighting for is not for service to Nigeria, but service to their interests. I did tell you that they were staying in APC to cause more maximum possible damage. I made that clear here. I have been proven right.

“I told you about the noise that they were talking about that they wanted to stay and work with the family of APC, but they were just trying to create the type of impression that they had a raw deal.”

Asked if the splinter group constitutes any threat to the ruling party in 2019, he replied: “The issue of threat doesn’t arise. I don’t feel it in my body. I have been in politics, if I am modest, at least forty years. I have contested elections and never lost.

“I have operated at the local government level; I have operated at the National Assembly level; I have been governor in this country; I have been secretary of the Board of Trustees of the PDP and I am a second-term senator, today.

“I have seen enough in Nigeria’s politics and from what I have seen, the indicators are we are dealing with 419ners. I call them 419ners; I don’t hide it.

“How many of them can go to their constituencies? I don’t call them Abuja politicians because they don’t deserve that accolade. These are just 419. These are guys who go from place to place. The truth is that if Saraki and the rest of them genuinely feel aggrieved and want to go, out let them go out there.

“Three weeks after the convention, we are hearing that some riff-raff have formed something called R-APC.”

Asked to respond to Adamu’s allegations, Saraki’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Yusuph Olaniyonu, simply said: “No response.”

On Wednesday, APC National Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, described those leaving the party as mercenaries who joined the party because of what they could gain and failed to do so.

The chairman said this at the inauguration of newly-elected national executives of the 39-member Non-National Working Committee (NWC), at the party’s national secretariat in Abuja.

Reiterating that he is ready to listen and address genuine grievances, he however, said for these mercenaries, the doors and windows of the party are wide open.

“For the mercenaries, who mistakenly joined the party because of what they can gain personally, not for the good of the country, not for the good of the party. They came in purely for greener pastures and they have found that they have had to work hard to plant the grass, to wet it, nourish it for it to become green and they cannot wait.”