Defection: Atiku, others nomadic politicians, shameless – Maku

By The Citizen

The Minister of Information, Labaran Maku has described those defecting from the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), as political normads who are desperate and have no shame neither do they have the interest of the country at heart.

Maku made this known while fielding questions from the State House correspondents in Abuja where he described those that have left the PDP as trouble makers, non-democrats, quarrelsome, people with oversized egos, who cannot stay under the same roof with anybody for one week without the top blowing up.

” APC is just a political party without political focus nor ideology, just desperate for power to the extent that it was willing to accept  and celebrate monsters”, he said.

Maku said after their departure, the PDP was now gaining some stability and Nigerians will soon see the difference, adding that for the past one year, the defectors had turned the party into object of ridicule, abusing it and making it look so bad in the eyes of Nigerians.

“Generally as I have always said, no party would be happy to lose their members to any party because every political party would wish that it is label to retain all its members because number itself is good that no organization would want to lose its member. So it is not something you will beat your chest and say you are happy when your members leave. But I have always made a point that sometimes you need to lose weight to gain strength and that is exactly what has happened in PDP.

“When a number of these people were leaving PDP, I said the party would be healthier in the long run. First of all, if you look at all the people that have left PDP some of them are the people that have caused all the headaches in the party, they have been the ones attacking their party, they are very quarrelsome, they have oversized egos, some of them cannot stay under the same roof with anybody for one week without the top blowing up. A number of these people who left, if you take a look at the history of our party and look at their antecedent you will see that they are migrants, they keep migrating from one place to another.

“So a party needs to have members that believe in its ideology, that settle down because they believe in the party. A party is not just a market for people to stand for election, but a number of people who are leaving, see the party as a market place for election, a number of them will come in because they want to contest for election, but if they lose they run out. A political party after 15 years of democracy in our country, we must begin to settled own, let us know those who believe in the party, those who believe in the policy and programmes of the party, not because they have an electoral ambition , but because they want the party as a organization that would develop the society improve its policy, improve the country.

“Now as we grow older on PDP, we are beginning to see that after these people left, the party is gaining some stability. You notice that the last one year, they have turned the party into object of ridicule, abusing the party making it look so bad. Meanwhile all the parties they have gone to, none of them has a programme yet, none of them has any ideological focus. The new parties they have run to, they have no registered members yet, yet to have a convention.

“So you can see clearly that even within this small period since some of these elements left PDP they have caused significant problem in the new party they ran to. They are already causing a huge problem there. There is already an explosion in APC in Kano, because Kwankwaso went straight and took over a party he was not part of, and insist that he must be the leader, and sacked those who formed the party. You go to Sokoto again, Wamakko went immediately and hijacked the party from  those who formed APC in the place, who dissolved their own parties in order to form a political party that would compete with PDP. These people went and hijacked the party took it away from them so even from the point of view of justice, you were looking for democracy and you saw nothing wrong in going to another and hijacking the structure from them.

“So you can see they are not democrats, these are serious desperadoes who believe that unless they are in charge nobody should be and they are not democrats. If you are a democrat, you join a new party you will work your way through, you will give confidence to the new people in the party but they went straight, hijacked the structure sacked those who formed the APC in Kano in Sokoto, the same problem in Adamawa is going on and most of the places today APC has two structures. The structure of the original founders and the structure of those who are joiners, who are struggling hard to displace those who formed the party.

“And what we have seen in recent times is that because APC does not have a principle, doesn’t have an ideology, they have sidelined those who struggled to form the party because of the new entrants. This for me is not how political parties are formed. Political parties are formed by believers who control the soul of the party even as new people are coming. So clearly if you look at what is happening in the PDP,  really as at today, it is the only solid multi national political party, it is multi religious, it is multi ethnic and it is multi national to build the capacities of Nigerians.

“We don’t have the extremists that they have in APC and other parties so gradually Nigerians will see the difference between these parties and those who left. So I want to urge journalists to begin to monitor these movements more so as some of them have been moving for years now, they have not stopped they are like the Fulani nomads, they move from one party to another without shame , it shouldn’t be something that we should cherish.

“Leaders must be stabile and that is what the people lack and also if you look at the people now being celebrated in APC, they were the same people APC was attacking in PDP before as we started. So now they have cross over from PDP, when they were in PDP they were seen as monsters, they were abusing them and then they cross over to APC, they celebrate them now as the new leaders. So you see something is wrong, and APC must tell Nigerians truly what does it have to offer them, nothing! It is just semantics and looking after failed people in PDP to APC if that is the programme, then I think that something serious must happen, the press must hold people to account because this the time to hold people to account”, he said.