Fresh crisis in Zamfara APC as Yari, Marafa reject Matawalle leadership

Another crisis looms in Zamfara State’s All Progressives Party as a former governor of the state, Abdulaziz Yari, and Senator Kabiru Marafa, have rejected the declaration by the national leadership of the party that the incumbent governor of the state, Bello Matawalle, has become leader of the party.
This is coming after Matawalle had defected to the party from the Peoples Democratic Party and was received with funfair on Tuesday, where Yobe State governor and chairman of the APC caretaker committee announced Governor Matawalle as a new leader of the party.
But Yari and Marafa, featuring on the BBC Hausa Service on Thursday, said they would not surrender to the Matawalle leadership.
Yari said, “It’s one thing that we are challenging which is the declaration by Governor Mai Mala. His declaration was not part of what we discussed with six governors before he (Matawalle) defected.
“What we all agreed during our meeting with the six governors was that Matawalle should be received into our fold and afterwards we should discuss how to integrate both his people and ours. But during the defection, we were told that the party executives should be dissolved. You just don’t dissolve executives of a party because nobody has the power to do so.”
On his part, Marafa said the declaration of Matawalle as the leader of the party in the state amounted to deception, insisting that they would not accept it.
He said, “We said for proper integration, there should be a meeting for proper consultations but all of a sudden, announcement was made that the party executives had been dissolved and someone was named as leader of our party. This is incorrect.”
Until February this year, Yari and Marafa were of different camps in the Zamfara State APC.
The intervention by Buni ended the feud between the two political gladiators which caused the APC Zamfara State in the 2019 to lose all elections it won including the governorship poll.