PDP Defectors Not Liability To APC Government

Ali

Onochie

Let us be frank about this. President Muhammadu Buhari could not have won the 2015 presidential election without the support and financial muscle of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) defectors to the All Progressives Congress (APC) at the run up to the election. This is more so in northern Nigeria where the CPC and the ANPP could not match the financial capacity of the PDP.

Many people may not know this, but out of the 17 APC governors in Northern Nigeria presently, 15 were former members of PDP. The only governors without history of PDP membership are the governors of Borno and Yobe states, the strongholds of the ANPP for years.

It is an insult to say that former governor of Rivers State, and current minister of Transportation, Mr Chibuike Amaechi, who risked all including the anger of his kinsmen in Niger Delta to help APC defeat another son of the Niger Delta who was the president of Nigeria, then is now a liability to the APC government.

It is therefore unfair when those close to President Muhammadu Buhari as aides or political appointees began to blame them for real or imaginary problems hindering APC government from fulfilling its mandate.

This matter came to the fore once again yesterday when the President’s Special Assistant on Social Media, Lauretta Onochie alleged that the PDP defectors to the APC are liabilities to the party.

She said that members of the PDP who defected to the APC in the build up to the 2015 elections have become a liability to the Buhari led- administration.

She spoke in Abuja at the 2nd Annual International Conference of the Progressive Solidarity Forum (PSF).

She said the defectors constituted over 50 per cent in the present administration and could be found in almost every sector.

According to her, these defectors were a bad influence to youths in the country, who she said, had been turned into organs of transmitting hate speech and raining abusive words and insults on the policies of government to discredit its work against corruption.

 “They are everywhere; they are in the presidency, they are in the National Assembly, you can find them in the judiciary, they are in the law enforcement agencies, they serve their personal interests, they encourage our unsuspecting youths to be their foot soldiers on the social media to abuse and curse people while their own children are sipping tea in America, in England or elsewhere. They are a bad example to our youngsters on social media,” Onochie said. 

Lauretta was also re-echoing what the Comptroller General of Nigerian Customs, Col Hameed Ali (rtd) said earlier over the alleged bad influence of PDP defectors to the Buhari brand or ideal.

The Comptroller-General on Friday last week declared that President Muhammadu Buhari has “derailed” barely two years in office, but blamed the Peoples Democratic Party for obstructing the president’s efforts to make Nigeria better.

“There is no doubt that we have derailed because we are not doing what we say we want to do,”  Mr. Ali was quoted as saying.

He held the opposition party responsible for Mr. Buhari’s failures, saying PDP loyalists occupy as many government offices as members of the ruling All Progressives Congress.

“Today, with all sense of responsibility, I want to say that we have 50 per cent of PDP in our government. How can we move forward with this load? How can we achieve our target with this load?” Mr. Ali said.

I consider the view of Onochie and Hameed Ali as a very elementary diagnosis of some of the challenges confronting the government. It showed lack of deep thinking and shallowness of the thought process of those who give advice to our dear President Muhammadu Buhari.

Let me use two key incidents that appear to have tainted the anti-corruption  war of President Buhari’s administration, to show that PDP defectors are not necessarily the problem. The sacked former Secretary to the Federal Government, Mr Babachir Lawal who abused his office by engaging in acts of corruption was not a defector from PDP. Check out the names that have been linked with the reinstatement and promotion of former chairman of Presidential Task Force on Pension Reform, Mr Abdulrasheed Maina, they are not known to be defectors to APC on the eve of 2015 elections.  The minister of interior, Lt-General Abdulrahman Bello Dambazau (rtd), the attorney general and minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN, are certainly not PDP defectors. It was not PDP defectors that made the DSS to write two conflicting reports on the suitability of Mr Ibrahim Magu to become the substantive chairman of the EFCC. The conflict between the EFCC and the Attorney General’s office on the prosecution of corruption cases cannot be blamed on the defectors. Similarly it is difficult to situate the face-off between NNPC GMD and the minister of state for Petroleum Ibe Kachikwu on the doorsteps of the PDP defectors.

From my observation, the major problem derailing President Buhari’s agenda is that many of his associates and former PDP, ACN, APGA, CPC, ANPP members do not share Buhari’s ideal and his stand against corruption. That is why the war against corruption will be difficult to be won. Until the president identify the people not in sync with the anti-corruption war in his government and sack them there is not going to be much progress. To therefore single out the PDP defectors as the problem is not fair to the defectors and to the party especially at a time when many APC members are not happy at the turn of events. If the APC wants to win in 2019 it cannot afford to antagonize or alienate any part of the coalition that helped the party to win the presidency in 2015.