The All Progressives Congress (APC) has reacted to the resignation of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar from the party, saying it is not worried.
APC National Publicity Secretary, Mr Bolaji Abdullahi, said this on Friday while addressing reporters in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory.
“A loss of fortune is in numbers,” the APC spokesman said. “So, if we are able to see the number of people that followed the vice president to his new party, that is when we will begin to worry but we have not seen.
“So, when we see we will know whether we need to worry or not. It is about numbers”.
Abdullahi was speaking hours after Atiku announced his resignation from the APC, the party he joined since February 2014.
The former vice president had accused his former party of failing to spearhead the rebirth of a new Nigeria as it had promised the people.
He also claimed that the APC has adopted arbitrariness among similar practices, as well as failed to carry the youths along in governance.
“While other parties have purged themselves of the arbitrariness and unconstitutionality that led to fractionalization, the All Progressives Congress has adopted those same practices and even gone beyond them to institute a regime of a draconian clampdown on all forms of democracy within the party and the government it produced,” he had said.
But Abdullahi said the APC wished Atiku good luck in his future political endeavours, saying the party would not miss him except it was able to ascertain that a substantial number of members left with the former chieftain.
He also said the party had not been informed of the defection of the former vice president, saying they were surprised when they learned about his resignation.
“We have not seen any formal notification to that effect but based on what we have seen in the social media, we can say all together it is surprising but for us politics is all about interest.
“So, if the former vice president feels that his interest is better served elsewhere, we can always wish him good luck,” he added.
On the several reasons that led to the resignation, the APC spokesman said the party was in the process of building itself, stressing that such task cannot be achieved in a very short time.
He, however, said they would continue to improve the party’s system until they get the kind of party intended to build.
“It takes many years to build a strong political party. In a new party, you find some people are happy, some people are not so happy and everybody would have to take their decisions at some point.
“So, we don’t have anything to say rather than to wish the former Vice President good luck,” Abdullahi said.
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