Ben Ezechime, Enugu
A foundation member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr Osita Okechukwu, says years of trust deficit in Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), stimulated defection of members to APC in droves.
Okechukwu, a former Director-General of Voice of Nigeria, said this in a statement he issued on Sunday in Enugu while reacting to the position of Sen. Aminu Tambuwal that “no one with conscience will join the APC.”
He noted that Tambuwal cannot truly talk of conscience when he connived to wreck the PDP; “hence it is the trust deficit of his party’s leadership which stimulates massive defectors from PDP to APC.”
It could be recalled that Sen. Aminu Tambuwal, the former Governor of Sokoto State, at the recent North-West Zonal meeting of the PDP, had expressed disappointment over the recent wave of defections by members of the PDP to the ruling APC.
Tambuwal was quoted as saying that, “I believe that no one with conscience will join the APC.
“People leave parties for different reasons, but what I have been observing in recent times are defections not based on the interest of the people but on stomach infrastructure.”
Okechukwu replying, noted that the wave of the defections “is basically the outcome of erroneous breach of the rotation convention of President and Section 7 of the PDP’s Constitution of which Tambuwal was one of the masterminds.”
“One cannot fathom how my friend Sen. Tambuwal didn’t rate the breach of the rotation convention.
“Especially, against his erstwhile bosom friend Nyesom Wike, Minister of FCT; who backed him in 2018 presidential primary when no aspirant of Southern extraction in the PDP contested in obedience to the rotation convention as unconscionable?
“This is the offshoot of Wike Masquerade raging,” the APC chieftain said.
He reminded Tambuwal and his cohorts that some patriotic members of the PDP are defecting because the party had been demobilised, irretrievably wreckage rendered and ineffective to play its traditional role of main opposition party.
On the impending coalition or merger which would likely dislodge the APC in 2027 Presidential Election, Okechukwu replied that the greed in the party would not allow them to forge solid merger.
He said they (PDP) had already started cooking up awkward permutation of South 17 and North 11 years in Aso Villa, just to rupture again the rotation convention, “as if Nigeria got independence in 1999.”
“Tambuwal and cohorts act as if they have 100 per cent votes of the North in their pockets and albeit the Northern electorate are quarantined in a dormitory to be hauled to the polling booth on Election Day.
“Their masterminds always forget that the Northern electorate are one of the most sophisticated in the country and cannot be toyed with.
“Or do they think that the South-Eastern electorate that put all their eggs in one PDP’s electoral basket, even when APC presented Rt. Honourables Chuba Okadigbo and Edwin Umezoke in 2003 and 2007 as Vice Presidents respectively are amnesia stricken?
“The defection is not about stomach infrastructure, it is about PDP’s leadership trust deficit.” Okechukwu added.
