The Group was racting to a recent CHANNELS TV interview by Oyegun in which he said the APC has lost Taraba state alongside others to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Oyegun was quoted as lamenting the loss of the APC at the courts in the flurry of recent verdicts that saw the opposition losing some states.
In a statement today by its Public Relations Officer (PRO), Gani Bako, the Taraba Mandate Group said that Oyegun was not been honest about the political reality in the state.
The statement reads in part: “how can he (Oyegun) says that APC lost Taraba when the APC never got the state in the first place? Oyegun is giving the impression that the APC even had a good showing in Taraba at the polls or even won. Yes, APC lost Taraba but not in the way Oyegun is saying it. APC lost because it was never on ground in Taraba in the first place and the party’s governorship ambition came in dead on arrival. APC had no structure or support base to win any major poll.”
The group added that Taraba has continued to remain a PDP state throughout its association with the former ruling party.
It said that any cursory look at the state showed that historically, culturally and by sociological inclination, Taraba is PDP.
“And our commitment to the party is not like a case of fair weather friends. We can’t stop being PDP now because of some spurious wind of change. So APC claiming to lose the state in the way Oyegun puts it is deception. APC, we repeat did not win, couldn’t have won Taraba in any major polls. At the governorship election, we can grudgingly concede that it did well in four or five local government areas which are traditionally opposition sites in the state. But beyond that, PDP did tremendously well in all the other eleven local government areas. In fact, today, both at the state and national assemblies, PDP has produced a majority of members.” [myad]
