About 1000 PDP members including the former National Treasurer, Bode Mustapha who were said to be loyal to former President Olusegun Obasanjo in Ogun State have defected to the APC. They warned the Inspector General of Police, IGP, Suleiman Abba against plunging the country into war following his removal of the security details of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal.
Mustapha, also a former member of House of Representatives between 1999 and 2003 who had earlier submitted his form of intent for the Ogun Central Senatorial seat, led other prominent members of the PDP including the former Chairman of Abeokuta North, Sunday Akintona. He described APC as a better alternative to PDP.
He berated the IGP for withdrawing Tambuwal’s security aides, saying that the continued absence of the security aides attached to the speaker could expose him to sundry security risks particularly the menace of the Boko Haram sect whose activities had attacked prominent persons in the country. “In Nigeria, we love sentiments a lot. Do we know what can happen to Nigeria if anything should happen to Speaker Tambuwal? Nobody knows! The IGP should not put this country on fire. He should immediately restore Tambuwa’s security aides until a court of competent jurisdiction declares his seat vacant.
“He was elected as the primus inter-pares in the House of Representatives. He was elected as leader by his members and it is only his members that can remove him as Speaker or a court of competent jurisdiction. Then and only then can his security aides be withdrawn.
“When people were defecting to PDP, it was hosanna in Aso Rock to the extent that Governor Mimiko of Ondo State defected to the PDP.
‘’But whatever is good for the goose is equally good for the gander. When Tambuwal defected, you withdrew his security aides. Why didn’t you do same when Governor Mimiko defected to the PDP because he was elected on the platform of the Labour Party, LP?.”
The APC state Deputy Chairman, Alhaji Tajudeen Lemboye, who received Mustapha’s form however, promised that the party would provide a level playing field for all aspirants in the state.
Meanwhile, Obasanjo had earlier in the year said on Channels Television that he bore no grudge against anybody in the PDP, but expressed his displeasure with the choice of Mr Buruji Kashamu as the Chairman, Mobilisation and Organisation committee of the party in the South-West.
“As a former President of Nigeria, the Chairman of West African Commission on Drug and a member of the Global Commission on Drug, I cannot accept that the zonal leader of my political party and, worse still in my zone, will be an indicted drug baron wanted in America. How do I explain that to friends outside Nigeria? This is only one of the many issues that I have pointed out and still pointing out,” he said, while giving a reason for his seeming withdrawal from the party’s national activities.
According to him, he had a “national and international standard to maintain and reputation to keep and sustain.”.