Chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Bayelsa state, Preye Aganaba said on Thursday that President Muhammadu Buhari remain the party’s best candidate for the 2019 Presidential election, asking the Minister of Women Affairs, Aisha Jummai Alhassan to resign her appointment as a minister in the Buhari cabinet.
Aganaba who spoke in an interview with newsmen in Abuja also asked Nigerians to ignore the quit notice issued by a coalition of Niger Delta Agitators to northerners and people from the south west to leave the region, describing them as attention seekers.
Reacting to a statement credited to the Minister that she would support former Vice President Atiku Abubakar for the 2019 Presidential election ahead of President Buhari, Aganaba said while the Minister has the eight to her opinion, it was expressed in the wrongly, saying “She has a right to her choice but I think she is not been fair. If she want to make such public statement as a serving Minister, she should resign her appointment.”
Aganaba who expressed confidence in the Buhari government however wants the President to bring into his government those he described as capable hands who understand the ideal of change mantra which the party stand for anytime he plan to re-jig his cabinet.
“So, I don’t think for now that the APC has any other choice that to re-elect President Buhari, though people are free to contest, nobody is stopping them, this is APC where we usually have free and fair primaries. The last Presidential primaries in Lagos, President Buhari won more than half of the votes.
“During the last APC presidential primaries, the campaign slogan for Buhari was ’12 million assured votes’ and I don’t think one single vote has left that 12 million assured votes, in fact, more has even been added.
“I am not bothered about the economy because that will be fixed, for me I’m looking at the politics of various zones because that will determine how much we win the election. To win we will win, but by what margin? These are my issues and then if we can also do well at National Assembly elections.
“In government wise, I think we have done well. Yes, may
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar
be not where we suppose to be because we also did not know about what we met when we came in 2015 but we have done well. In few days ago we heard about the story of Nigeria exited recession, the prices of food stuff are coming down, in Abuja here where I live I get minimum of 20 hours of electricity and some days light doesn’t go off for five days and so on.
“If President Buhari runs election today he is going to win. I don’t think the President is terminally ill, and like every other human being, people fall sick but the problem is because he is the President, is in government you begin to hear stories but he is back. I saw him yesterday he is looking very fresh, atleast he rested very well in Daura.”
He also expressed confidence that the crisis rocking the various state chapters of the party will soon be resolved saying “they will be amicably resolve because whether you like it or not we are going into elections and we can not go into we ctions with a divided house. In 2013, I saw leaders of this party brought together a disfunctional system and we went into elections in 2015 and we won. So, I still believe in the ability of this party to do the same thing before 2019.”
On the various agitations coming from the Niger Delta, he advised the government and Nigerians to ignore them, saying “most of these calls are political from people seeking relevance from government and for me I think they should be ignored because when they want to destroy pipeline nobody makes noise about it.”