A former Director General of the Voice of Nigeria, Osita Okechukwu, has said members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are leaving because the party has been demobilised to play its traditional role as the main opposition party.

Mr Okechukwu, a foundation member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), stated this in a statement on Monday in reaction to the claim by a former governor of Sokoto State, Aminu Tambuwal, that PDP members are defecting to the ruling party for personal gains.

On Saturday, Mr Tambuwal, currently the senator for Sokoto South, expressed disappointment over the recent wave of defections by PDP members to the APC.

“I believe that no one with a conscience will join the APC. People leave parties for different reasons, but what I have been observing in recent times are defections not based on the interest of the people, but on stomach infrastructure,” Mr Tambuwal said at the North-west Zonal meeting of the PDP.

Some members of the PDP have recently dumped the party to join the ruling party.

Last week alone, two members of the House of Representatives, Amos Mogaji and Garba Koko, defected from the PDP to the APC, citing protracted crisis and division in their former party.

On Saturday, a former governor of Kaduna State, Ramalan Yero, two former senators, Shehu Sani and Dajuma Laah, and many others left the PDP for the APC.

Speaking with journalists in Abuja on Sunday, Mr Okechukwu said Mr Tambuwal “cannot truly talk of conscience when he connived to wreck the PDP; hence, the trust deficit of his party’s leadership simulates defectors.”

He said the wave of defections resulted from an erroneous breach of the rotation convention of the president and Section 7 of the PDP’s Constitution, of which Tambuwal was one of the masterminds.

“One cannot fathom how my friend Senator Tambuwal didn’t rate the breach of the rotation convention, especially against his erstwhile bosom friend Nyesom Wike, Minister of FCT, who backed him in 2018 presidential primary when no aspirant of southern extraction in the PDP contested in obedience to the rotation convention as unconscionable. This is the offshoot of Wike Masquerade raging,” Mr Okechukwu said.

The former VON boss reminded Mr Tambuwal that some patriotic members of the PDP are defecting because the party has been demobilised, irretrievably wrecked, and ineffective in playing its traditional role as the main opposition party.

On the possible coalition or merger of some opposition parties aimed at dislodging the APC in the 2027 presidential election, Mr Okechukwu said the greed in the PDP would not allow them to do so.

He said they have already started cooking up awkward permutations of south 17 and north 11 years in Aso Villa, just to rupture the rotation convention again, as if Nigeria got independence in 1999.

“Tambuwal and cohorts act as if they have 100 per cent votes of the north in their pocket and albeit the northern electorates are quarantined in a dormitory to be hauled to the polling booth on Election Day.

“Their masterminds always forget that the northern electorates are one of the most sophisticated in the country and cannot be toyed with.

“Or do they think that the south-eastern electorates put all their eggs in one PDP’s electoral basket, even when APC presented Rt. Honourables Chuba Okadigbo and Edwin Umezoke in 2003 and 2007 as vice presidential candidates, respectively, are amnesia stricken? The defection is not about stomach infrastructure, it’s about PDP’s leadership trust deficit,” Mr Okechukwu said.