Parallel congresses: There’s a massive conspiracy against Buhari, says Marafa

Kabir Marafa, senator representing Zamfara central, says the irregularities at the All Progressives Congress (APC) congresses were targeted at President Muhammadu Buhari.

The APC ward, local government and states congresses were marred by irregularities and violence.

In an interview with PUNCH, the senator said the party leadership set some rules but was first to break the rules.

He accused APC national working committee (NWC) of not giving the congress committees forms for those seeking positions in some states to fill and return after they had made payments.

“After looking at the whole congresses, the way it started, what the party did and everything, to me, there is a massive conspiracy against the party and against the leader of the party – I mean the president of the country,” he said.

“A party is organising a congress, if you look at the first scenario, some people just came up with the idea of one-year tenure extension for members of the national working committee.

“The president was advised that the extension was illegal and that it would portend a serious problem to the success of the party. The president stood his ground and said we should go for elective congresses or consensus where possible.

“The party came up with guidelines on how these congresses should be conducted, but the same party that produced these guidelines was the first to break the rules. In one of the clauses in the guidelines, they said forms should be filled and returned within 24 hours, but the NWC did not even meet with the congress committees until Thursday evening. The committees started going to their stations (states) on Friday.

“The whole thing was like a kind of sabotage, so that this thing will become rancorous and there will be parallel congresses but a set of executive will be established for each state. The whole thing comes to just one thing – sabotage.”