Alhaji Abdulrazaq Abdulrahman who was the PDP candidate for the Kwara Central Senatorial election in the 2015 election was among the PDP leaders that left for the All Progressives Congress following the arrival of Dr Bukola Saraki in the party. We learned that the top politician who formalized his membership of the ruling party at his Idi Igba, Adeta area Ward, Ilorin, actually left the party with supporters numbering about 100,000 . In his remarks after the completion of the registration process, Razaq submitted that Kwara residents are yearning and ready for change, adding that the progressive politicians are ready to rescue the state from alleged bad governance.
The members of the nPDP who joined the APC after its merger with the Congress for Progressive Change, Action Congress of Nigeria, All Nigerian Peoples Party and part of the All Progressives Grand Alliance in 2013 had according to him caused damage to the image of the party. “I have left the PDP for the APC with my supporters. We are talking about 100,000 people. The APC, had to send 250,000 cards in order to accommodate all of us. Recalled that we were in the CPC and when the CPC merged with the ACN, they decided to bring in those they called the nPDP. And we realized that the people coming from the nPDP were not ones that we could work with.
They are agents of destruction. So we opted out of the alliance. We warned them then that the nPDP is a trap but they did not agree with us. They went on with the alliance, you can see the havoc they have caused to the party, they exited the party and we are back home where we belong in the APC”, he said. Political heavyweights in the APC are according to Razaq , collaborating and building consensus on how to defeat Saraki and the PDP in the 2019 general elections. “Our people have been yearning for change and they have been making demands. This is a new party, we will study the terrain, look at the opportunities available. Change has come to Kwara. In Kaiama Local Government, 90 per cent of the party members did not move to the PDP, they remained where they are. 80 per cent of the Kwara North stayed back. They are not moving. Even in the Kwara Central, most of the people did not move with them. So there is change in horizon and this is the beginning of a new dawn. For us in Kwara, the priority is about change. We had mal-administration for over 20 years. Now it is that change we want. It is not about who becomes governor or which geopolitical zone takes the mantle but we just want to get rid of these people that have mismanaged the economy of Kwara for years. Coming from the last local government election, anybody that lives in the state will witness that change took place. The opposition won the election, the people are ready for the change and the politicians are prepared now to harness the change, they felt the hearts of the people, they know that people want change so they are acting responsibly and meeting together to say change must come. That is why a good number of the politicians are saying, “let us have a consensus’ we are therefore working towards building a consensus”, he said.
