From Oluseyi Joseph Da Silva
As a fallout of the purported and controversial manipulations in the last primaries of the All Progressives Congress in Kwara State, about 500 have dumped the party and joined the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) in the state.
The youths who are from Ubandawaki ward in Ilorin West local government area of the state yesterday visited the national leader of the PDP and Senate President, Dr Abubakar Bukola Saraki in his GRA residence, Ilorin to pledge their allegiance.
The new entrants into the PDP from the troubled opposition APC in the state are former supporters of an aggrieved APC gubernatorial aspirant, Prof Shuaib Oba AbdulRaheem.
AbdulRaheem is still battling hard to recover his alleged ‘ stolen’ mandate during the APC controversial gubernatorial primaries in the state.
Though an oil mogul, AbdulRahman AbdulRasaq was announced as the winner of the vexed primaries from the APC national secretariat in Abuja, Prof AbdulRaheem and his supporters claimed that he won the primaries.
But, while pledging their allegiance to Saraki dynasty, the former supporters of AbdulRaheem said they were disappointed in the way and manner the affairs of the APC is being handled by its leaders and the discontentment that followed the outcome of its primaries across board in the state.
The spokesman of the decampees, Mohammed Okutadigi said they were disappointed in the way and manner their former leaders in the APC reacted to the outcome of the primaries.
“The refusal of the APC chieftains to accept the outcome of the gubernatorial primaries and agree to team up with the declared winner has clearly shown that these leaders are self- centred and are only interested in grabbing political offices to achieve some selfish ends.
“ Having discovered that some of our leaders are pursuing personal agenda and are not really championing the cause of the masses as they wanted us to believe, today we have come here to officially join the PDP and pledge our allegiance to our father, the lover of masses, Dr Bukola Saraki “.
Okutagidi assured Saraki of their preparedness to bring some other youths who had been deceived by fake promises back into the PDP’s fold.
Responding, the Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki thanked the defectors for taking their destiny in their own hands and for realizing that their aspirations can only be achieved within the PDP which he was confident would win the 2019 general elections in the state and form government at the federal level.
