Chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Osita Okechukwu, has asserted that leaders of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who supported former Vice President Atiku Abubakar‘s presidential bid and ignored zoning should be blamed for the wave of defection in the party.
Naija News reports that Okechukwu, while addressing journalists in Abuja on Thursday, urged the PDP to stop crying wolf, stressing that the mass defection of state governors to the All Progressives Congress (APC) is self-inflicted.
According to Okechukwu, the leadership of PDP should accept the blame for burying its horse of integrity and loyalty away in the 2023 presidential election.
He said, “As CNPP Spokesman then, I warned the PDP to stop self-serving elders of the party, like His Excellency Atiku Abubakar and cohorts from breaching the zoning convention during 2022 presidential primary, power drunk they plunged PDP in this mess.
“It’s evident that the callous negligence of the PDP Constitution that has come back to haunt the party. Am at loss how the PDP leadership allowed Atiku the foremost beneficiary of zoning convention to fly the party flag in 2023; when he was again the beneficiary in 2019 when all the southern presidential aspirants obeyed the zoning convention in 2018 by refusing to participate in the Port Harcourt presidential primary, which was hosted by His Excellency Nyesom Wike, then Governor of Rivers State.
“The chickens have come home to roost, why are they crying wolf? Instead of confessing the grievous political sin it committed in 2023, PDP has neither shown any moral contrition nor introspection, rather they only assumed that the northern electorate will join their impunity against zoning convention, the 4th Republic glue which unite our dear fatherland. The sophisticated northern electorate rejected their impunity against zoning convention, for them Atiku is not Buhari the Mai-Gaskiya.
“The blame game should be distributed among those PDP leaders that supported Atiku to bury the soul of PDP, which was founded on integrity, unity and faith. That is the irrefutable reason that caused the ongoing implosion of the party and the ignoble exodus first by the same elements who began the defection malaise and moved to hijack the Africa Democratic Congress (ADC).
“Could there have been internal contradictions like Wike Masquerade of 5 Governors and Peter Obi’s Obedient Movement; both unintended consequences arising from the breach of the zoning convention if not for those power mongers?”
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