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Why I may defect to PDP- Udoedehe
Senator John James Akpan Udoedehe is an All Progressives Congress (APC) gubernatorial aspirant in Akwa Ibom State. In this interview with ENO-OBONG OKON, Udoedehe says that if the crisis that has attended the governorship primary election in his party is not resolved fairly, he may defect to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Excerpts:
There are speculations that because of the outcome of the governorship
primaries in your party, you will be defecting to the PDP. How true is
that?
Incidentally, I have been accused of not opening up the space in APC for people to come in, and the blackmail went on for a long time. They would have said they wanted the ticket of the APC. So they met some of our leaders and tried to show that they had more money than me. According to them, they donated billions of naira to the party as the only group that can challenge the incumbent governor, Dr. Godswill Akpabio naira to naira, dollar to dollar. So some people in Nigeria who don’t understand Akwa Ibom politics think otherwise. I am not moving to PDP for now, what happened was that they came with a very violent and volatile arrangement to destroy our party. Because of what happened to me in 2011, I did not want that same thing to happen again. What we did was to walk away and we advised them that that was not election. Our party’s constitution does not allow option A4 and what they did was to open the stadium’s back door for people to come in; PDP people, not the real delegates. What we needed to do we did to ask them to stop so that we could conduct a free and fair primary, if we had a winner, then we could congratulate ourselves, then we could walk away and move forward. What they did was completely alien to our principles. I am presently not moving to PDP, I am still in APC. We have an option of appeal. In their wisdom, if they consider what they are considering, then we have no alternative than to appeal. And it is not going to be a personal decision; a lot of our followers will meet and take a decision for the interest of our group and we will chart a way forward.
Could the way forward include moving to the PDP, a party that you have always been criticising?
Yes. It also means that we will have to choose between one evil and another evil, it will mean that there is no difference between APC and PDP.
Incidentally, I have been accused of not opening up the space in APC for people to come in, and the blackmail went on for a long time. They would have said they wanted the ticket of the APC. So they met some of our leaders and tried to show that they had more money than me. According to them, they donated billions of naira to the party as the only group that can challenge the incumbent governor, Dr. Godswill Akpabio naira to naira, dollar to dollar. So some people in Nigeria who don’t understand Akwa Ibom politics think otherwise. I am not moving to PDP for now, what happened was that they came with a very violent and volatile arrangement to destroy our party. Because of what happened to me in 2011, I did not want that same thing to happen again. What we did was to walk away and we advised them that that was not election. Our party’s constitution does not allow option A4 and what they did was to open the stadium’s back door for people to come in; PDP people, not the real delegates. What we needed to do we did to ask them to stop so that we could conduct a free and fair primary, if we had a winner, then we could congratulate ourselves, then we could walk away and move forward. What they did was completely alien to our principles. I am presently not moving to PDP, I am still in APC. We have an option of appeal. In their wisdom, if they consider what they are considering, then we have no alternative than to appeal. And it is not going to be a personal decision; a lot of our followers will meet and take a decision for the interest of our group and we will chart a way forward.
Could the way forward include moving to the PDP, a party that you have always been criticising?
Yes. It also means that we will have to choose between one evil and another evil, it will mean that there is no difference between APC and PDP.
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