Members of the House of Representatives, who defected to the Peoples Democratic Party on Tuesday, have described as laughable the dream of the APC that they will make a U-turn and return into its fold.
They said God had already forbidden that such a thing should happen.
The members noted that the decision to dump the ruling party didn’t come easy but it came anyway, after they had weighed all other options and concluded that defection was the best.
Their reactions came on the heels of fresh reconciliation moves by the APC and alleged offer of return tickets to the members to contest the 2019 polls.
Thirty-seven lawmakers had on Tuesday defected from the APC. Thirty-two of the lawmakers defected to the PDP, while four members moved to the African Democratic Congress.
One member has yet to name his new party.
The Coordinator of the 32 defectors, Mr. Razak Atunwa, reacted angrily to the thought of returning to the APC.
Atunwa, who is the chairman, House Committee on Justice, said the APC had “limited understanding” of governance, a reason the party reduced the defection to just return ticket.
He said, “Ticket or no ticket, this is a decision that we have taken and we know this is the best.
“We are talking about fundamental national issues, lack of good governance and generally, a government that has failed to deliver on its promises to the Nigerian people.
“When you reduce it to ticket, you make this whole fight look unserious or merely which party has majority or not majority. We are talking about a government that has failed.”
Several other defectors shared Atunwa’s views.
One of them, Mr. Bode Ayorinde, told Saturday PUNCH that God would not allow the members to return to their “vomit.”
He stated that there was no way the APC would attract anyone, considering the alleged injustice being perpetrated in the party.
“God forbids bad thing; that I should return to APC. What for?” Ayorinde added.
Meanwhile, the Peoples Democratic Party says the President Muhammadu Buhari’s Presidency has become a citadel of liars where deceptive lies are churned out daily to beguile Nigerians.
The party was reacting to a presidency statement credited to the Special Adviser to the President on National Assembly Matters, Senator Ita Enang, claiming that members of the National Assembly who defected to the PDP from the All Progressives Congress had agreed to work for Buhari in the 2019 election.
Dispelling the submission as a hallucination of a failing government, the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan, said the Buhari presidency had become so jittery over its alleged imminent loss of the 2019 election.
He said this was why it had allegedly made recourse to what he called bare-faced lies and childish blackmail.
He, however, said such would not save the disintegrating APC from drowning.
Ologbondiyan, in a statement in Abuja on Friday, maintained that those who deserted the alleged sinking ship of the APC did so in protest against the incompetence of President Buhari leading to the unabating killings, bloodletting and biting economic hardship across our nation in the last three years.
The Punch
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