• Ruling party focused on defections not governance, says PDP
• Shehu Sani blames Northern leaders for region’s woes, backs Tinubu
The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has described as baseless the claim by Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi, Rotimi Amaechi and Nasir el-Rufai that President Bola Tinubu and his party were “weaponising” poverty to score political goals.
Before Tinubu was declared the President in May 2025, Atiku was the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Obi was the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Amaechi was Minister of Transportation, and el-Rufai was Kaduna State Governor.
However, the National Publicity Secretary of PDP, Debo Ologunagba, said the APC was more focused on celebrating defections than governance.
Meanwhile, civil rights activist, Shehu Sani, who represented Kaduna Central at the Senate of the 8th National Assembly, blamed leaders of the North for the poor state of the region, while urging Northerners to support Tinubu in 2027.
APC National Publicity Secretary, Felix Morka, argued that the criticisms by the quartet at an event in Abuja, at the weekend, to mark the 60th birthday of Amaechi were a shameless attempt to cling to the old rent-seeking economy that enriched them at the expense of Nigerians.
He asserted that as beneficiaries of the corrupt and inefficient economic system, the quartet was discomforted that Tinubu’s reforms were dismantling the insidious and permissive system that enabled and sustained their reckless plunder and exploitation of the economy.
The APC particularly insisted that Amaechi lacked the moral latitude to make such a claim, having served for a total of 24 years as Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly, governor and minister “freeloading” on state resources, with absolutely no record of attempting to combat poverty in his state or the country.
It contended that Amaechi’s open admission of hunger barely two years out of office simply underscored the depth of his self-serving motivations and those of his coalition partners in their quest for power and selfish exploitation, and not for the interest of the people.
“When Amaechi declared, ‘I am hungry,’ he must mean, and must be understood to mean, that he is hungry and desperate to return to his entitled dependency on state resources and patronage,” it noted.
OLOGUNAGBA, reacting to recent defections to the APC, on ‘Focus Nigeria’, a programme on AIT, said Tinubu’s administration was deliberately weakening opposition parties by encouraging defections through coercion and inducement.
“When you find the President of the country in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society like Nigeria, declaring his preference for a one-party state, that shows that they were aggressively attacking the processes of other political parties,” he said.
The PDP spokesperson said the National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting communiqué addressed the trend, noting that most defections were not based on conviction but pressure from the ruling party.
“Those are the kind of inducement and coercion referenced in the communiqué yesterday by the Chairman, Umar Damagum,” he said. “Some of those defections are not based on conviction; they are based on coercion because of the policy and the intention of the President, and of course, the APC, to say that he wants a one-party state.”
He accused the APC government of undermining democracy by using state power to lure opposition members.
According to him, the 2027 general election will not be about defections but about the APC’s performance in office.
SANI, while addressing the press in his Kaduna residence yesterday, said the former Northern leadership of the country failed to turn the region into a socio-economic paradise over the years.
Though he did not mention names, he said those involved were politicians excluded from the government of the day, and who were bent on inciting the masses against the government.
Saying that the North appreciated the progress made so far under Tinubu, he urged the people to support the President in the 2027 elections.
