The national leaders of th ruling APC, Bola Tinubu has said that Senate President Bukola Saraki and the others who recently left the party did so because they wanted automatic tickets and sharing of Nigeria’s wealth.
Saraki, 50 other federal lawmakers as well as governors Samuel Ortom of Benue, Abdulfatah Ahmed of Kwara and Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto, parted ways with APC to join PDP in July.
While Saraki gave his reasons for dumping the APC to include persecutions he was put through in the party, some of the other defectors said that they were not being carried along.
But Tinubu, National Leader of the APC and former goveror of the state of Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, had something quite different to say.
In a statement he entitled ‘They Go Away Because We Go the Right Way,’ Tinubu said that the defectors left the APC because the party could not offer them what they wanted.
The defectors, he said, “left the party to return to a motley agglomeration that would promise them what true democracy could not: automatic tickets, sharing of the national wealth and other offices and privileges.
"The APC refused to make such bargains as they are part of the ancient regime; these bargains are not of our democratic new way. "There is nothing wrong with ambition. Without a degree of ambition, we would never strive to improve and develop ourselves. But ambition, restrained by nothing but itself, is a dangerous commodity.
"Unwedded to social conscience, it leads to ruthlessness; it is the father of the deception that leaders are meant to lord over instead of to serve the populace,” he said. Tinubu boasted that the ruling party would be better off with their exits.
"We can now focus more wholly on democratic governance inside and outside the party. Inside the party, we have adopted direct primaries to discourage corruption of the democratic process,” he added.
"Regarding public policy, we can now better articulate our progressive stance without having naysayers among complaining that we are going too far or that the good we seek for the people ought not to be done.
"We can more decisively push for the jobs program, expansion of social security for the poor, affordable housing programs and a viable mortgage system, national infrastructural program that will provide adequate power and potable water, basic health care for all, and educational reform.”
The APC has since called on Saraki to vacate his position or face impeachment; but Saraki laughed off the call, saying APC would continue to dream about their plan to impeach him as they need 73 senators to lawfully make it happen.
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