Leave Taraba Politics Alone – PRP Candidate Tells TY Danjuma

The Senatorial candidate of the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) for Taraba South, Iliyasu Gadu, has challenged former Minister of Defence, General TY Danjuma, to stop interfering in Taraba politics and allow the people freely choose their leaders.

According to him, Taraba State is not the property of one individual to superintend over as an emperor, and General Danjuma, who was also a one-time Nigeria’s Chief of Army Staff (COAS), should readily refrain from playing the overlord in the State.

Gadu, who made the comments during an interview in Abuja, maintained that the State is bigger than any individual to hold hostage, adding; “Taraba State does not belong to an individual. Therefore he (TY Danjuma) should leave us alone to choose our leaders.

“He alone cannot decide for Taraba because he has one vote like anyone else. It is high time for him to go and rest because he is not a monarch.”

Gadu, therefore, urged the Taraba people to stand up for their rights and choices, saying; “We should help the process by doing the right things because religion and ethnicity cannot help us to move forward.

“In Taraba, the rights of individuals are breached by not allowing democratic space to blossom. Manipulation thrives in Taraba because it belongs to an individual”, he further alleged.

Despite winning his party’s primary, Gadu did not participate in the February 25 National Assembly polls due to the exclusion of PRP’s logo from the ballot papers by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

For him, INEC’s exclusion of PRP’s logo from the ballot papers still baffles him and the Party’s teeming supporters, adding; “I could not think of any reason why INEC would exclude my party from participating in the senate election because all outstanding issues regarding my candidacy had been conclusively resolved with INEC and cleared the way for me to be a candidate for the senatorial election under PRP.”

He further explained that the party duly applied and submitted names to INEC to be uploaded on its portals for the 2023 elections, but was disappointed on Election Day when he discovered that the Electoral umpire had excluded the PRP from the senatorial election’s ballot papers in which he was a bona fide candidate.

Gadu however assured that the PRP would be seeking legal remedy for the infraction and breach perpetrated by the Electoral Commission – With reports from Daily Trust