From Tony Osauzo, Benin
Some members of the All Progressives Congress (APC), from the South-South states, yesterday, in Benin City, adopted former governor of Zamfara State, Dr Abdulaziz Yari as their preferred candidate for National Chairman of the party ahead National Convention of the party.
The group made the adoption when members selected from Edo, Delta, Rivers, Bayelsa, Cross-River, Rivers State and Yari’s coordinators in Edo State, met.
The South-South Zonal Coordinator of the Abdulazeez Yari APC National Chairmanship Support Group 2021, Aiyevbekpen Osakue, said Yari possesses the qualities that would lead APC to victory in the 2023 general elections.
“Dr Yari dropped his classroom chalk to seek public service calling firstly he secured a strategic position in the party bureaucracy as State Secretary of the All Peoples Party (APP)in 1999 by 2003, his political dexterity was no longer a matter of conjecture Abudlaziz Yari was elected as the state chairman of the Zamfara State chapter of the ANPP and simultaneously he was the chairman of the Ahmed Yerima Campaign Coordinating Committee, the committee that delivered Yerima as the governor of Zamfara State.
“In 2007, he became the National Financial Secretary of the ANPP and from that position he contested and won election into the House of Representatives. He fought the then almighty PDP to become the governor of the state in 2011. The people gave him an overwhelming victory for a second term and the governors saw his leadership qualities and made him Chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum. He is the man APC needs to retain power and win more states in 2023 and beyond”, he added.
In their remarks, state coordinators of the group in Delta, Edo and Rivers States; Chief Dumkuru Augustine, Warisenibo Joe Johnson and Hon. Sylvanus Igbogbo, respectively, said their open adoption of Yari was after painstaking meetings in Abuja where they x-rayed all the names being thrown up for the position.