A former Minister of Aviation cum member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential campaign council, Femi Fani- Kayode has said the demons he claimed were in the ruling party relocated to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as soon as he defected into the APC in 2021.
He stated this during an interview with Channels Television’s Politics Today, monitored by TNC.
Fani- Kayode, who joined the APC in September 2021, said he left the PDP because the party became the monster he thought the APC was, adding that the ruling party is now transformed.
He said, “The APC of the past and I’ve said this before on your programme, is not the APC of today. The APC of the past is not the APC of today. The demons that were in the APC at that time have simply relocated and gone into the PDP and I will explain to you why. In the APC today, ethnicity is respected, possibly unlike before. Am not scared to say it.
“My views were my views at that time until things changed. New leadership came into the party. A leadership that was responsible and sensitive to the feelings of people led by Mai Mala Buni, the Governor of Yobe State. New people came in, new governors that I happen to know very well, they gave me assurances, they honoured every single word.
“A lot of people that were in the PDP at the time including Matawalle of Zamfara, Ayade of Cross Rivers, and Umahi of Ebonyi, and other governors defected, including myself and so many other party leaders came for a reason. And the reason we came was, here we had a situation where the APC was responsible, responsible, and sensitive to the very things that we fear. What are those things? Ethnic domination, ethnic domination.
“And we saw a situation whereby the PDP was becoming the very monster that we thought the APC was and they was a transformation, they opened their doors, they promised a level playing field, no matter what your faith is, no matter what your ethnicity is, and they did precisely that.”
The ex-aviation minister also said Nigeria must take painful decisions if it wants to prosper economically, noting that there would be palliatives to cushion the effects of such moves.
According to him, the APC’s presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu will discontinue the things that Buhari has not done well.
TNC recalls that Fani-Kayode, a former Minister of Aviation, was the Director of Media and Publicity of PDP’s Presidential Organisation in 2015 when then President Goodluck Jonathan sought re-election but lost to APC’s Muhammadu Buhari.
Fani-Kayode was a strong critic of Muhammadu Buhari’s administration till he dumped the PDP last year to join the APC.
