Mass exodus of party leaders has hit the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Kano State as Mas’ud Doguwa-led factional state executives defected to the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC.
The publicity secretary of the faction, Musa Danbirni, confirmed the defection to DAILY NIGERIAN, saying they will address the press on Monday to state their reasons for dumping the party.
It was gathered that 12 out of the 14 executives and thousands of their supporters, joined Mr Doguwa to dump the party on Sunday.
On Saturday, top party leaders including former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Imam Buhari; former member of the House of Representatives, Ahmed Salik; former chairman of Nassarawa Local Government Council, Surajo Marshal; a grassroots mobiliser, Yahaya Bagobiri, among others expressed their resolve to support the re-election bid of the state governor, Abdullahi Ganduje.
In September last year, the National Working Committee, NWC, of the PDP ignored a subsisting court order to dissolve Mr Doguwa-led exco and appoint a new exco loyal to a former governor of the state, Rabiu Kwankwaso.
A Kano State High Court presided over by Justice N S. Umar, had restrained the national and state leadership of the PDP from tampering with the Kano state chapter of the party.
Justice Umar in an interim order dated Aug. 28, ordered both the applicants and the respondents to maintain the status quo ante, pending the hearing and determination of the motion on notice.
Umar MaiGoro-Rano and four others dragged the national and Kano state leadership of the PDP before Justice Umar challenging the plans to restructure the party’s executive committee.
The court ordered the respondents and any other person or persons to restrain from interfering or tampering with the tenure of the existing leadership of PDP in Kano state.
“This honourable court restrains any other person or persons from disturbing and or intimidating the administration of the State, Local Government areas or ward officers from doing anything or taking any steps that are likely to interfere with or disturb the officers tenure which are protected under section 47 (1) and section 223(1) (a) of the 1999 constitution”, Justice Umar ruled.