Weve mobilised 70,000 members to PDP Group
A group within the All Progressives Congress, Justice Forum, says 70,000 of its members in the South-West have defected to the Peoples Democratic Party.
About 3,000 defectors who converged on the Salvador Towers in Surulere, said they left the APC because the national leader of the party, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, had abandoned them after they helped his party to win elections.
Speaking with journalists at the event, the leader of the group, Chief David Abidakun, explained that the members were from across the South-West and not Lagos alone.
He noted that the group was one of the major founding groups of the Alliance for Democracy and later became the most populous group in the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria that merged to form the APC.
He said, We are not counting the number of people here but our membership. We have a membership of over 70, 000 in the South-West and all of us will join the PDP in our various states in the South-West after the formal ceremony
We believe that the PDP is the place to be and so we have decided to be part of the winning team.
The Deputy Chairman of the PDP in Lagos, Chief Sikiru Apena, who received the defectors, promised to treat them like old members of the PDP.
When contacted, however, the Publicity Secretary of the APC in Lagos, Mr. Joe Igbokwe, said the defection was meaningless, describing it as the biggest joke of 2014.
Igbokwe, who said the crowd at the venue was rented by the PDP, described the event as a charade.
He said, It is of zero consequence. Those that defected have no weight. They have no strength, no finance and no training to make an impact. It is the biggest joke of 2014. It is a rented crowd. You know when you give people about N2, 000 each, they will come for any event.
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Weve mobilised 70,000 members to PDP Group