From Victor Osula, Abuja
Following their inability to secure a return ticket on the platform of the governing All Progressives Congress, APC, for the 2023 general election, 22 Senators are said to have indicated interest to defect from the party. According to party chieftain, Femi Fani-Kayode in a tweet on Wednesday, the Senators may defect to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in protest.
Their threat however prompted the National Chairman of the party, Abdullahi Adamu to schedule a meeting with the party leadership at the National Assembly to try an prevent the mass defection.
Confirming the impact the defection may cause the party, Adamu who later spoke to journalists after the meeting with members and the President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, said the meeting was fruitful and would be resolved amicably.
“The meeting with the senators was most fruitful. The issue of defection is an unfortunate development when it happens but this is a season where there is all sort of behaviours in the political space and ours is not an exception,” he said, adding that every election cycle always come with such problems.
He said; “In every election year, this kind of thing gives cause for stakeholders to sneeze and Nigeria is not an exception so is the APC, not an exception. I don’t care about what is happening in other parties, my focus is on the APC. But we all know that the occurrence is not only happening in the APC, it’s happening across other political parties too. And because we are the ruling party, our problems are exaggerated before the public.”
“There is no responsible leader that would not be worried when he loses one member not to talk of two. At the moment we are faced with the stark reality of our problems. I have committed my colleagues at the National Assembly to face the problem squarely and see the problem as solvable.
“We are in politics, I don’t know what would happen tomorrow, nobody does.”
