A former Kaduna State Commissioner for Finance and close political ally of former Governor Nasir El-Rufai, Muhammad Bashir Sa’idu, has defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Sa’idu announced his exit from the African Democratic Congress (ADC) at a ceremony in Zaria on Saturday. He was received into the APC alongside a former ADC governorship aspirant, Jafaru Sani, former Senator Suleiman Abdu Kwari, and an estimated 200,000 card-carrying members.
The former commissioner, who previously served as Chief of Staff under the El-Rufai administration, explained that his political group, Kaduna De-Initiatives, abandoned the ADC after it was hijacked.
He subsequently declared the ADC politically dead, insisting that his faction had constituted the genuine opposition in the state.
“We built ADC with our strength, sweat and blood, but unfortunately, a few individuals who later joined the party hijacked it. We discovered that the party was being teleguided by a family, a situation which we found unacceptable”, Sa’idu.
Sa’idu predicted that the ADC would finish a distant third when the 2027 election results were announced.
Welcoming the defectors, Kaduna State Governor Uba Sani commended Sa’idu as a principled public servant and assured the returnees of equal opportunities within the ruling party.
“He is a man of the people, and even when he went to the ADC, we were confident that he would return home. He stands for justice. The person who joins today, the one who joined yesterday and the one who will join tomorrow, we are all one”, Governor Sani.
The governor disclosed that the APC has upgraded its projected vote target in Kaduna State from two million to three million ahead of 2027. He revealed the plan of the party to embark on house-to-house campaigns across the 4.6 million registered voters in the state to mobilise massive support for President Bola Tinubu’s re-election bid.
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