Members Of The New PDP May Join APC If Peace Talks Fail

tukur pdp

If ongoing talks to resolve the political impasse threatening the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) fail to yield any tangible result, members of the new PDP may defect to the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Kano State Governor, Dr Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso, disclosed this to the Hausa Service of the BBC Friday, ahead of the Tuesday meeting of the party scheduled to discuss the crisis.

According to Kwankwaso, who is also an arrowhead of the group of five northern governors that have been traversing the country to seek ways of re-uniting the ruling party, if genuine truce fails the governors have several options from which to chose, including that of defecting to another party.

He noted that: “if PDP leaders are circumspect and heed our requests, then we will remain in the fold. But if we smell a rat, we don’t have any stress moving to APC because many of its stalwarts are our people.”

The governor revealed that apart from the seven of them that joined the splinter PDP-II, there were other governors, who although have not indicated their support in public, were sympathetic to their move of protesting against the PDP-I chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur.

Meanwhile, a new development may hamper the proposed peace talks as Nigeria’s Police authorities yesterday shut the headquarters of the new Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) led by Alhaji Abubakar Kawu Baraje.
The police claimed to be acting on the ruling of a Federal High Court in Abuja yesterday about the status of the two factions of the Peoples Democratic Party.

The shut down of the New PDP Secretariat was applauded by the Bamanga Tukur led group. In contrast, the Abubakar Kawu Baraje group thumbed it down as sheer impunity.

The Tukur PDP claimed the police action was in conformity with an interim ruling of the court that held that the splinter group should not operate or parade themselves as leaders of the PDP until the hearing of the suit before it.

Olisa Metuh, publicity secretary of the old PDP said that when the court ordered that the warring parties to maintain status quo ante bellum until the determination of the case, “the court clearly granted the request of the PDP that the group led by Alhaji Abubakar Kawu Baraje should not operate or be recognized by INEC.”