A foundation member of the All Progressives Congress, APC, and former DIrector General of Voice of Nigeria, Mr Osita Okechukwu has said that for House of Reps Speaker, Senator Aminu Tambuwal cannot truly talk of conscience when he connived to wreck the PDP.
He said Tambuwal’s intervention amounted to trust deficit in his party’s leadership, which incentivises decampees.
Okechukwu was answering questions from journalists on the position of Senator Tambuwal that no one with conscience would join the APC.
Recall that Senator Aminu Tambuwal, who once governed Sokoto State, had, at the North West Zonal meeting of the PDP, expressed disappointment over the recent wave of decampments by members of the Peoples Democratic Party to the ruling All Progressives Congress.
He was quoted to have said: “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 said that the wave of the defections was basically the outcome of erroneous breach of the rotation convention of president and Section 7 of the PDP’s Constitution, which Tambuwal and others masterminded its inclusion in the party document.
“One cannot fathom how my friend Senator 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,” Okechukwu said.
He reminded Tambuwal and his cohorts that some patriotic members of the PDP were defecting because the party had been demobilised, irretrievably wrecked and rendered ineffective to play its traditional role of main opposition party.
When told of the impending coalition or merger that will 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 have 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% votes of the north in their pocket, 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 southeastern 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 decampment is not about stomach infrastructure. It’s about PDP’s leadership trust deficit,” Okechukwu stated.
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