A former aide to ex-Presidents, Olusegun Obasanjo, and Goodluck Jonathan, Doyin Okupe has explained why he feels Governors and Senators elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), are dumping the party for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in their numbers in recent times.
According to the former media aide, there are many reasons for the unfortunate development, prominent among them is the fact that Atiku Abubakar, who was the party’s flag bearer in the 2019 presidential election, allegedly withdrew from the party and left the country after his defeat.
In a tweet yesterday, he said; ‘After the presidential elections in 2019 and the victory of the APC; both at the elections and at the supreme court, the Presidential candidate of the PDP who had gained the leadership of the party by his emergence at the primaries in Port Harcourt withdrew from the party travelled out of the country for quite a while but long enough for the party to become leaderless at the very time that a strong leadership was a political imperative.’
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He went further to add that the absence of Atiku as the party’s leader paved way for all sorts of pseudo leaders and opportunists to emerge and started acting and pretending as leaders.
‘The party thereafter became rudderless with no clear central rallying point that can galvanise its unity and strong internal strength and cohesion required in trying times.
‘Opposition to the ruling party was disjointed, uncoordinated, lacklustre and most unimpressive.
All was left to the hoarse lone voice of one man Kola Ologbondiyan, with occasional outbursts from the national chairman.
‘Governors, Senators and party leaders were completely muted with a deafening silence of the grave.
‘The BOT and its leadership became moribund and went completely off the political Radar. They became a default app representing nothing but a paralysed body of elders with no capacity to energise the party functionaries, they themselves lacking in vision, vitality, commitment or courage of true loyal elders.
‘The stage became open to ambitious presidential aspirants who distanced themselves from the party and concerned themselves only with schemes and selfish devices to fulfil their ambitions.
‘In doing this, they forgot that without a functional and strong united and vibrant party, which is the ultimate platform they needed to contest, all their efforts will be in vain and absolute jeopardy.
‘Thank God for the Bukola Saraki led reconciliation committee, a commendable product if the National Executive Committee which at least tried to douse various fires silently burning in the branches of the state of the party.
‘This purposeless drifting, lack of focus and absence of clearly defined leadership has made the party not too attractive or inspiring to young and upcoming politicians.
‘It has also disillusioned the Nigerian electorates, who in the face of incontrovertible and inexplicable grand incompetence and lacklustre performance of the APC government, had looked up to the PDP as THE alternative and hope for 2023 become forced to take the regrettable decision that APC and PDP are like “six” and “half a dozen.’ he concluded.
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK