President Muhammadu Buhari has formally received Deputy Minority Leader of the Senate, Sen. Emmanuel Bwacha, into the All Progressives Congress (APC) from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Bwacha was presented to the president by the Chairman, APC National Caretaker Committee and Governor of Yobe, Mai Mala Buni, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Thursday.

The ranking senator is from Taraba State.

The Star understands that Bwacha’s governorship ambition motivated his defection from PDP to APC.

Bwacha served as Commissioner for Agriculture between 1999 and 2003. Thereafter, he was elected to the House of Representatives for the Donga/Ussa/Takum Constituency between 2003 and 2007.

He failed to secure a seat in the Senate in the 2007 elections. But in 2011, he was elected a senator on the PDP platform. He won re-election in 2015 and 2019.

Buni, who spoke to State House correspondents after the presentation, said: “We just brought in our newest member of the party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), in the person of Sen. Emmanuel Bwacha, for Mr. President to formally receive him into the party, and that is what we have just done.

He said the president was happy and delighted for receiving a ranking Senator like Bwacha joining APC from Taraba.”

On his part, Bwacha said: “I choose the APC because I know from the homefront that is where there will be a level playing ground, number one.

“Then number two, the Ibi Bridge, which had been awarded and work is ongoing, was awarded under President Buhari, nobody from my senatorial district is not happy about this project, because this has been our cry since the colonial days.

“Also, under his watch, the Kashimbila Dam project had been completed. So, I had to answer to the calls of my constituents to join this party and redefine the narrative in Taraba State and restore its lost glory.”

The senator called on citizens of the state to join forces together so that they could build a better Taraba, where governance and development of infrastructure would be seen as the hope of the people and a priority.

TheStar