A foundation member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr Osita Okechukwu, has declared that years of trust deficit in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) simulated the defection of members to APC in droves.
The former director-general of Voice of Nigeria, VON, disclosed this yesterday in Enugu while reacting to the alleged 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; he maintained that the trust deficit of his party’s leadership simulates massive defectors from PDP to APC.
Sen. Aminu Tambuwal, the former Governor of Sokoto State, was quoted to have expressed disappointment at the recent North West Zonal meeting of the PDP over the recent wave of defections by members of the PDP to the ruling APC.
Replying to the statement, Okechukwu noted that the wave of defections “is basically the outcome of erroneous breach of the rotation convention of the 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 the 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 has been demobilised, irretrievably wrecked, and ineffective in playing its traditional role as the 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 percent of the votes of the North in their pockets, and albeit, the Northern electorates are quarantined in a dormitory and hauled to the polling booth on Election Day.
“Their masterminds always forget that the Northern electorates are one of the most sophisticated in the country and cannot be toyed with.
“Or do they think that the southeastern electorates 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.
