TELL Magazine

As race for the national chairmanship of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), revs up ahead of its national convention in February 2022, some members of the party from the South-south states have endorsed former governor of Zamfara State, Abdulaziz Yari as their preferred choice.

They made their position known in Benin City, Edo State, on Wednesday at a meeting of party members from from Edo, Delta, Rivers, Bayelsa, Cross-River and Rivers States, including coordinators from the three senatorial districts of Edo State.

According to the South-South Zonal Coordinator of the Abdulazeez Yari APC National Chairmanship Support Group 2021, Aiyevbekpen Osakue, Yari possesses the qualities that would lead APC to victory in the 2023 general elections.
Reeling out Yari’s credentials, Osakue said “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.”

Similarly, the coordinators of the group in Delta, Edo, and Rivers States, Dumkuru Augustine, Warisenibo Joe Johnson, and Hon Sylvanus Igbogbo, said their open adoption of Yari followed painstaking meetings in Abuja where they said they scrutinised all the names being thrown up for the position.