PDP Has Lost Credibility – Falae

The Social Democratic Party (SDP), has said that six former governors, led by a former governor of Zamfara state, Senator Ahmed Yerima, four serving senators and two other former senators among other prominent politicians, have indicated interest to join the party “very soon.”

The party also revealed that several other prominent Nigerians from Gombe, Borno, Plateau, Nasarawa and Benue are talking with the SDP leadership.

While reading the reports of activities that took place in the last eleven months to the party’s National Executive Council (NEC) meeting, yesterday in Abuja, the SDP Deputy National Chairman, Isiaqu Abdulhamned, said the former governors and senators were enthusiastic to join the party ahead of 2019 general elections.

According to him, “there are so many good things happening to the party and with this momentum and people approaching us, I don’t think we even need the PDP; that is the truth.”

On the proposed defection, the deputy chairman said: “These six governors are led by the former Governor of Zamfara state, Senator Ahmed Yerima. In fact, they met with our leader yesterday and the meeting will continue today and they are quite enthusiastic to join us.

“But there is one accident of history that happened before we met them, these former governors met within themselves and agreed on four conditions for choosing a party to work with. One, they agreed within themselves that they were not going to form a new political party. Two, they said they were looking for a party that has a national credible leader, and we have one.

“Another condition they gave is that they wanted a political party that has done its national convention which will last more than 2019. As they finished the meeting, we were there the second day and they were shocked when we told them about SDP because all the conditions fitted exactly into the SDP.

“When we asked them why they were interested in a party that has already done its convention, they said if they joined any party that has not done it convention with their resources, the party will be divided because people will be looking to be national chairman, secretary and all that like it is happening in PDP.

“Secondly, six senators from the North-east only, while four of them are serving members, two are out of office, have also been talking to us from Borno, we have had four meetings with them and they are very much prepared to work with us.

“From Plateau state, high power delegation came here, a former chairman of PDP in the state, Dr. Aruna, and a serving House of Representative member was also here and we are talking.

“From Gombe state, a former House of Representatives member, Hon. Aruna Duku, has approached us. He said he has bought one Siena car, 11 bicycles and paid three years office rent in the central area in Gombe state for the party. All he needed is for our national leader to be in Gombe, while he will hand over all these things.”

Also speaking, the SDP National Chairman, Chief Olu Falae, said it took SDP years of experience “to get to where it is today,” adding that the party had not merged with the PDP “because it has lost credibility.”

He said: “I am happy that a lot of people are interested in our party. Someone sent a text message to me pleading passionately that the nation was putting its hope on this party and that we should for goodness sake not allow discredited people to sour our image and so on, and I replied and said that you are speaking to the converted.”
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On speculated plan to merge with PDP, Chief Falae said, “please, we read in the newspapers that the SDP has merged with one party or it has been absorbed with another party, please just don’t believe it because you don’t have a leadership that can be bought or that can be absorbed. It is because of the credibility they see in us that they want to come, that is what they don’t have.

“When the PDP delegation came to me they said that they were going to confess their political sins that when they were in power they abused the power, first of all within their party they killed the internal democracy, people will chose a candidate but the party will hand pick, trying to play God and they eventually did themselves very serious arm and did Nigeria a lot of arm as well.”

Meanwhile, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has debunked insinuations that it was behind the crisis rocking the opposition PDP , saying the police “do not take instructions” from it.

The Ahmed Makarfi-led faction of the party had alleged that the APC was responsible for the action of the police which prevented its members from meeting at the International Conference Centre (ICC) in Abuja, the initial venue of their stakeholders’ meeting on Monday.

The faction also alleged that the governing party somehow influenced the Appeal Court decision which favoured the Ali Modu Sheriff –led faction.

But in a statement issued yesterday in Abuja, APC National Publicity Secretary, Malam Bolaji Abdullahi, said, “Neither of these allegations is true in any respect. The police do not take instructions from the APC. The police themselves have explained why they stopped the Markarfi group from meeting at the ICC.

“If the factional PDP is dissatisfied with the police explanation, they could seek further clarifications from the police or pursue alternative means of redress.

“So far, the Makarfi group has not faulted the police or provided any proof for its allegations against the APC, which we find quite surprising, considering that Makarfi and his group have in their ranks, individuals who are sufficiently experienced to know that without any evidence, such allegations could easily be dismissed as baseless and, therefore, be ignored by all right thinking members of the public, including our party.

“The reason we have not simply ignored the wild allegations is because we are imperiled by utterances and conducts that attack the integrity and independence of our judicial system. Every Nigerians should be worried by the behaviour of the various PDPs which is capable of eroding the confidence Nigerians in our judicial system.

“Even as they battle themselves for survival, we urge restraint in the interest of our democracy. We wish to reiterate that the APC has no interest in the internal crisis that is consuming the PDP, which is only one of several opposition parties in the country.

“We pray for them to put their house in order soon because as a political party that was once in the opposition, we believe that democracy is better served when the opposition is alive.

“However, we also know the PDP can only begin to take steps towards recovery if they stop peddling conspiracy theories and blaming imaginary enemies.”