Defection: “Why People Are Leaving APC” – Oshiomhole Reveals

ADAMS Oshiomhole, the national chairman of the All Progressive Congress (APC) have stated why people are dumping the party.

Shortly after Mr Oshiomhole emerged the chairman of the APC some aggrieved members of the party broke away forming a faction of the party self-styled Reformed APC (R-APC), and threatening to dump the party.

The gale of defection started at the Senate with 14 APC lawmakers leaving the APC. Their counterparts at the House of Representatives numbering about 36 also left the party. Most of them defected to the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP).

On Wednesday, the party lost the governor of Benue State, Samuel Ortom, to the PDP.

On Thursday another APC governor hinted of his plans to leave the party.

Speaking at the meeting of APC National Working Committee (NWC) and the party’s caucus at the House of Representatives, Oshiomhole said those leaving the party were doing so because the avenue for looting the nation’s treasury has been cut off.

“I come from a state where we call PDP that believes that rural people should be neglected and rural roads should be abandoned because once you cannot reach the rural communities, then it is easier to rig election on their behalf in the urban centres. We will have to create and Institute of Progressives Studies so that whoever is in this party, a member or a leader must understand what we stand for,” the former Edo State governor said.

“If we are bonded together on the basis on set of ideas or ideology, it will be difficult for people who subscribe to this ideology to decamp on the basis of not gaining for his pocket rather than not delivering to the welfare of the Nigerian people. Until we get there, this Vilico chair will continue.

“I said the other day, and I believe it, that if you are a man or a woman of honour, you cannot in the morning vomit all of those impurities in your stomach, and then, in the afternoon, because you are not getting a buffet, you convert that vomit to a lunch and eat it with your eyes open.

“You have to be completely bereft of ideas and anything such as honour to be able to do that and look your people in the face. And, I say to those who say are going to PDP. Go, that is where is where you belong.

“If you left there because you thought that the culture of sharing the money would be deep in APC and you have found that sharing the money is not part of it, and you choose to return. Goodluck. But, you must know that the access to CBN has been cut off, the access to NNPC has been cut off, the access to cutting defence funding to private pocket has been cut off, and that those who have done it are helping security agencies to explain,” he added.