Five members of the House of Representatives have defected from their Political Parties to the ruling All Progressives Congress APC.
Tajudeen Abbas, speaker of the house, announced the lawmakers’ defection on the floor of the green chamber on Thursday
Four of the defected members are from the Labour Party, LP, while one member is from the People’s Democratic, Party PDP.
The lawmakers from Labour Party are Chinedu Okere (Owerri municipal/Owerri north/Owerri west federal constituency), Mathew Donatus (Kaura federal constituency of Kaduna), Akiba Bassey (Calabar municipal/Odukpani federal constituency of Cross River), and Esosa Iyawe (Oredo federal constituency of Edo).
Abbas congratulated the legislators, saying they had “taken the right decision”.
The defected members while giving their reasons defection, explained that the ideologies of the APC aligned with their ideologies. They also cited the cases of faction, division and crises in their previous parties.
Among the defected members is the daughter of a former Governor of Delta State, Chief James Ibori.
Ali Isa, minority whip, and George Ozodinobi, deputy minority whip, protested the defections. Ozodinobi, an LP chieftain, said his colleagues had no ideology.
“When people enter a political party without ideology, you see such level of defection,” Ozodinobi said.
In recent times, LP and PDP have lost some legislators to the APC. In July, Ezenwa Onyewuchi, senator representing Imo east, defected from LP to the APC. In October, Chris Nkwonta and Sulaiman Abubakar left the PDP for APC.
By: Julian Adetinuyo
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