The 2023 vice presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Yusuf Buhari, alongside the party’s Kano State governorship candidate, Bala Mohammed Gwagwarawa, as well as members of the Kano State Working Committee (SWC) and 38 local government chairmen and secretaries yesterday dumped the party for the All Progressives Congress (APC).The mass defection is seen as a major political realignment ahead of the 2027 general election.
Other members of the Kano State chapter of the SDP who also joined APC include 13 House of Assembly and six House of Representatives candidates Deputy Senate President Jibrin Barau received the defectors into APC at an event that took place at REIZ Continental Hotel in Abuja. The mass defection is seen as a major setback for the former Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai, who recently joined the SDP ahead of the 2027 general election.
Barau said the defection of SDP’s heavyweights in Kano into the APC showed that the mission to use the party to scuttle the chances of the APC in 2027 was dead on arrival.
APC National Chairman, Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, who warmly welcomed the prominent defectors, assured them that they would get all the rights and privileges accorded fellow party members. Represented by the ruling party’s Deputy National Chairman (South), Chief Emma Eneukwu, the national chairman described the defection as a transition “from darkness to light”.
He said it underscored APC’s role as a beacon of transformative leadership under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
A former Kano State governor, Senator Kabiru Gaya, told the gathering that the SDP was already empty by the time El-Rufai joined it.
Also, Yusuf Buhari said he and the other defectors moved to the APC following the successes the party had recorded under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Gwagwarwa said he joined the return to APC, given the outstanding performance of President Tinubu within less than two years in office.