The governorship candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in Nasarawa State and former Information Minister, Mr Labaran Maku, on Wednesday, faulted the Senate President, David Mark’s comment on his defection to APGA.

Maku also picked a hole in Mark’s alleged silence over the defection in his own native Benue State of former Minister of State for Trade and Investment, Dr Sam Ortom, and former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) national chairman, Senator Barnabas Gemade.

At the recent PDP rally in Keffi to flag off the governorship campaign of Alhaji Yusuf Agabi, the Senate President accused Maku of being ungrateful while various speakers at the presidential campaign in Lafia repeated the same accusations on Tuesday.

In a statement signed by the Director of Publicity for Maku Campaign Organisation, Zakari Edego, the former Minister of Information insisted that the import of the attacks on him clearly showed that there was panic in the PDP in Nasarawa State following his emergence as the flag bearer of APGA.

He said he was being persecuted by leaders of his former party purely for religious reasons.

Maku stated that “the real issue in the state is that some people within and outside it believed that no Christian should ever be governor of the state.”

He also said the attacks on him were orchestrated to sustain the status quo in Nasarawa, which, he noted, was already leading to destruction of the state by insurgents and mercenaries.

•Adapted from a Nigerian Tribune report. Photo shows Maku.