ABUJA—ALL is not well with te defunct new Peoples Democratic Party, nPDP, bloc in the All Progressives Congress, APC, as some high profile members of the bloc have dismissed as pure baloney claims of marginalisation by a faction led by Alhaji Abubakar Kawu Baraje.

The group, led by former governor of Nasarawa State, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, was at the national secretariat of the ruling party yesterday to submit a letter detailing the fortunes of the nPDP bloc under President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration. Other members of the group are a former member of the House of Representatives from Kwara State, Moshood Mustapha, Abdulmumuni Jibrin from Kano, Chief Theodore Georgewill from Rivers, Abdullahi Mahmood from Kano, Ahmed Wadada Aliyu from Nasarawa and Sen. Ahmed Abubakar from Adamawa. The group also alleged that Baraje was only playing the script of his paymasters who were simply out to destroy the APC at this crucial time. “We know the voice. We know who he (Baraje) represents. We know where he is coming from,’’ Abdullahi said after submitting the letter dated May 14, 2018 and addressed to the national chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun. Continuing, he said:: “We received with great shock and embarrassment the news that a former acting chairman of the PDP, Alhaji Kawu Baraje, led four others to deliver a letter they claimed on behalf of the nPDP which is defunct and has long dissolved into the APC during the 2013 merger. ‘’ In the letter, Baraje stated that we members of the then nPDP group are being marginalized, maltreated and witch-hunted in the APC and requested an urgent meeting with the party and Mr President within one week.” The letter which was titled, ‘’Unfounded and Unjustified Grounds for Confrontation with our Party the APC and Government by some members of the Defunct nPDP’’, had other signatories as Chief Theodore Georgewill and Abdulmumin Jibrin. It was copied to the President as well as a national leader of the party, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. It said: “As members of the then nPDP, we are aware that the last meeting that was held by the group was in 2014. Since then, no meeting has been called. Where did Alhaji Baraje and Col Olagunsoye Oyinlola obtain the alleged resolution to write the said letter? When and where was the meeting held? Who were those that attended the meeting? Describing Baraje’s petition as full of contradictions, the Abdullahi Adamu group expressed its desire to be part of any meeting that the President may want to have with the Baraje group. The letter read: “In any case, the letter is full of contradictions, false assertions, misrepresentations, distortion of history and facts and in many instances outright lies. ‘’We as initiators and founding members of the defunct nPDP therefore wish to condemn and disassociate ourselves from the letter and apologise for the obvious embarrassment the letter has caused our party and government. ‘’We wish to reaffirm our support and confidence in the party and Mr President and we do not in any way feel marginalized or maltreated as we are clearly in the league of the biggest beneficiaries of the party.” However, in a swift reaction, the Baraje group alleged that Sen. Adamu and his group have compromised, saying they were never part of the nPDP an initio. Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Comrade Timi Frank in a telephone interview with Vanguard said; “Anyway, to some of us, we can tell you clearly that we stand by the letter written by Kawu Baraje. Of course, we know that some of our members have compromised and we did not include some certain members in what we are doing. So, yes, if Abdullahi Adamu said he is not part of it, yes he is not part of it because we never even included him in the first place. We know some of them that are not with us today. You know somebody like the Minister of Transportation and a handful of them but I can tell you over 95 per cent of the nPDP are still intact and we are fully behind the letter.”