Former Zamfara Central Senator, Kabiru Garba Marafa, has formally dumped the All Progressives Congress (APC), accusing President Bola Tinubu of running what he described as a “use-and-dump” style of leadership.
Marafa, who represented Zamfara Central in the Senate from 2011 to 2019, was the Zamfara State Coordinator of the Tinubu/Shettima Campaign Organisation in the 2023 presidential election.
Under his watch, Tinubu won Zamfara without setting foot in the state, a feat Marafa had personally guaranteed.
But two years later, the Senator says Tinubu has abandoned Zamfara and betrayed loyal allies.
His decision followed a two-day meeting of the Senator Kabiru Marafa Consultative Forum, held on August 27–28, 2025, in Kaduna, with representatives drawn from all 14 local government areas of Zamfara.
In a communiqué signed by Forum chairman, Comrade Bashir Muhammad Mafara; secretary, Dr. Mannir Bature Tsafe; and other members, the group accused Tinubu’s government of marginalising Zamfara despite the state’s overwhelming support in 2023.
The communiqué noted that despite delivering victory for Tinubu, Zamfara got only a Minister of State appointment, while other Northwest states secured two ministerial slots each.
It added that even states where Tinubu lost, particularly Lagos, enjoyed more federal patronage.
Beyond politics, the Forum decried what it called deliberate neglect of Zamfara’s worsening insecurity.
Relying on recent data, it recalled that in 2024, Zamfara topped the national kidnapping chart, with 1,203 abductions out of Nigeria’s 4,722 cases.
In the week following a bye-election, 25 villages were reportedly attacked, 145 people kidnapped, and 21 killed.
It condemned the alleged use of security forces to secure APC’s electoral victory in Kaura Namoda while failing to protect communities ravaged by banditry.
Unlike other crisis-hit states where the President personally intervened with visits and relief support, Zamfara, the Forum said, was left abandoned.
The group also accused the APC leadership of sidelining Marafa’s political structure, a move they argued runs contrary to the party’s founding principles of fairness, equity, and inclusiveness.
After “exhaustive consultations and a critical review of prevailing circumstances,” the Forum resolved to pull out completely from the APC. It announced that Marafa’s entire political structure across all 147 wards of Zamfara had resigned in protest against what it described as “sustained injustice, mistrust, marginalisation, and deliberate neglect” of the state.
The Forum added that it would announce its next political direction in due course, guided strictly by the collective interest of Zamfara people.
