Three Northern Governors elected
on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) are on their way to the
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) any moment from now.
TheCable reports that as many as 30 senators and 70
members of the house of representatives are expected to follow suit before the
national assembly goes on recess in the next two weeks.
The potential defectors are
members of the “reformed” faction of APC that recently emerged.
Most of them were in the PDP
before defecting to APC under the aegis of “new PDP” in 2013.
Aminu Tambuwal, governor of
Sokoto state, Abdulfatah Ahmed (Kwara), and Samuel Ortom (Benue) are in the
“first batch” of big guns expected to defect, an insider revealed to TheCable.
“The plan also is that some APC
governors will not defect but will remain behind to inflict maximum damage on
the party from within,” a southern governor informed TheCable on Monday.
Tambuwal is rumoured to harbour a
presidential ambition while Ahmed, who is coming to the end of his second term
in Kwara, is expected to run for the senate.
“Ortom, on his own part, has been
guaranteed safe return to the PDP by Senator David Mark. He is considered the
best bet in the circumstance as the incumbent governor, and he can leave the
party to George Akume,” another insider, who attended some of the strategy
sessions said.
Senate President Bukola Saraki is
also expected to return to the PDP and is reported to be nursing a presidential
ambition — bolstered by the recent supreme court judgment which freed him of
criminal charges over allegations of false asset declaration.
Following the series of crisis
that hit the ruling party at the state congresses in June, some of the APC
governors and lawmakers who lost out have been guaranteed automatic tickets by
the PDP to entice them to the party.
APC currently controls 24 states
while PDP has 11 and All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) one.
If the three governors defect as
planned, PDP will increase to 14 while APC will reduce to 21.
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