The North-Central APC Forum, in a scathing statement issued yesterday in Abuja by its Chairman Saleh Zazzaga, a key member of the party’s 2023 presidential campaign council blasted a resolution adopted at a stakeholders’ meeting in Jos on October 17. 

The gathering, spearheaded by former APC Deputy National Secretary Festus Fuanter, explicitly rejected any move to welcome Mutfwang into the APC fold.

The forum, representing stakeholders from all North-Central states, claimed the anti-Mutfwang motion was driven by personal ambition rather than party interest. 

It alleged that most signatories to the resolution “could not deliver their polling units” in the 2023 elections yet are now angling for federal appointments under President Bola Tinubu.

Highlighting specific electoral failures, the statement pointed to the APC’s 2023 governorship running mate in Plateau, who lost his polling unit and ward to the PDP by a margin of 2,800 votes to 10,600. 

“And now he is among those who don’t want Mutfwang to come to the party,” the forum charged.Zazzaga’s group doubled down on its earlier public appeal for Mutfwang to abandon what it called a “drowning” PDP, insisting that only performers should earn political rewards. 

“We promise President Tinubu that after the next election, we will publish polling unit results so he knows who is who,” the statement warned.

The forum further alleged that its Plateau members were deliberately excluded from the Jos meeting and accused the anti-defection bloc of ethnic favoritism over electoral viability. 

“The real issue is who can win the governorship seat for the party,” it stressed, adding that only APC National Chairman Professor Nentawe Yilwatda delivered his local government for Tinubu in 2023.

Responding to Mutfwang’s weekend claim of being under pressure to join the APC which Plateau party leaders dismissed as baseless, the forum confirmed the governor’s assertion. 

“Influential figures in the Presidential Villa are behind our calls,” it revealed, vowing not to relent until Mutfwang defects “in the best interest of Plateau State and himself.”