Former spokesman of the House of Representatives, Zakari Mohammed, has described as mischievous, irresponsible and very unfortunate a statement credited to his former colleague from Yagba Federal Constituency, Sunday Karimi, in which he claimed that former Senate President, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, should be blamed for the automatic tickets given to some federal legislators on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Kogi State during the last general elections, a situation he claimed led to the current crisis in the party.
Zakari, in a statement in Abuja on Wednesday, noted that Karimi was just standing truth in the head and acting as a sore loser by holding Saraki responsible for a decision taken by the National Leadership of the party that all National Assembly members who defected to the PDP should be given automatic ticket.
“It was an open secret that both in PDP and APC, after the gale of defections in the National Assembly before the last general elections, members who defected into the respective parties and those who refused to defect were given automatic tickets. And except in a few, isolated cases, that directive of the national leadership was respected across board.
“How then can Karimi who lost in his aspiration to leave the House of Representatives to go and slug it out with Sen. Dino Melaye for the senatorial ticket blame Saraki over his inability to get the ticket? Was it Saraki that conducted the screening and the primaries in Kogi State?
“Karimi is a sore loser. He was being immature and not behaving like a good sportsman. Why did he not challenge the National leadership of the party when it took that decision? And how could Kogi’s case be different when the same directive affected all the party chapters across the country”, Zakari noted.
Zakari, who represented the Baruten-Kaiama Federal Constituency from 2011 to 2019 advised Karimi to desist from dragging the name of Saraki into his personal grouse and loss as Saraki is not just a national leader of the party but also the leader of the party in the North-Central zone.
“We will not tolerate a situation where a Karimi who, because, he could not get the party’s senatorial ticket in the last election, would now be sabotaging genuine efforts of the party to win the next Governorship polls in the state by making statements aimed at derailing genuine efforts to unite all members behind the party as the Governorship election approaches”, he noted.
