Amidst media report that Senate Minority Leader and former governor of Akwa Ibom state, Senator Godswill Akpabio is set to defect to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), the leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has said it is doing everything possible to retain his membership.
The party said its constitution only allows room for defection if cracks exist within its fold, adding that at the national level and the Akwa Ibom state chapter of the party, the PDP has no factions.

A prominent member of the PDP National Working Committee (NWC) told this medium on Sunday that speculations on the lawmaker’s imminent defection is not new, stating however that the party has continued to explore ways of handling the situation.

Although the PDP will go the whole hog to retain the membership of one of its arrowheads and stalwarts, the party leader said the final decision lies with the lawmaker.

He said: “We have been on this matter for quite a while now and as a party, we have done our best. We are not resting yet and we will do more to make him see reasons to have a second thought.

“Our constitution makes provision for leaving the party which is when there is a crisis or crises leading to the creation of factions. Across all the 36 state chapters, the FCT and the national leadership, we have no parallel executives. So there is no justification for anyone to leave our party for now.”

On the options before the party in the event of Akpabio’s defection; the PDP chieftain explained: “A man would only be able to tell which among his wife, makes the better soup after testing the soups made by each of the wives. If he chooses to leave despite the effort of the leadership of our party, we can only wait and see how events unfold for him.

“Deep inside of him, he knows what he is going into. The question is, why is he leaving? Let me add here that the choice is his but we don’t want him to leave because no party will be happy to lose its key member.”

The lawmaker, some media reports claim, is having a frosty relationship with his successor, the governor of Akwa Ibom state, Udom Emmanuel over the control of party structures in the state.