You Will Weep, Furious LP Lawmaker Blasts Colleagues For Defecting To APC

There was mild drama at the House of Representatives on Thursday after four lawmakers in Labour Party announced their defection to the All Progressives Congress (APC).

In a letter read by Speaker Tajudeen Abbas, the four lawmakers, Chinedu Okere (Owerri municipal/owerri north/Owerri west constituency), Mathew Donatus (Kaura federal constituency of Kaduna), Akiba Bassey (Calabar municipal/Odukpani constituency), and Esosa Iyawe (Oredo federal constituency of Edo) said they were resigning from the Labour Party due to division occasioned by leadership crisis within the party.

Akiba in his letter observed that the Labour Party is currently embroiled in a severe and protracted crisis, with two factions at the national level vying for leadership.

According to him, the division had extended to the state’s local government at all levels, as evidenced by the existence of parallel executive committees both of which are engaged in litigation.

He noted that the crisis has rendered the party ineffective in fostering unity and providing a stable platform for governance.

Giving his own reasons, Esosa also noted that his decision to dump the Labour Party was as a result of the party’s inability to declare “who should emerge as the legitimate caretaker committee from the national to state levels”

Referring to the incessant tussle brokering the leadership of the party and the numerous perpetual court cases against the leadership of the party, the lawmaker said he and his supporters were in a state of confusion as to the party’s stability in leadership.

“With regards to my right to freedom of association as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended, I hereby wish to notify you of my defection from the Labour Party to the All Progressive Congress APC, whose ideas align with my political aspirations and ideology”, he stated.

However, shortly after the speaker read the defection letters, Deputy Minority Whip, George Ibezimako Ozodinobi (LP, Anambra), stood on a point of order and described the defectors as people without ideology, noting that the labour party is not embroiled in any crisis.

With his voice laced with a mix of anger and disappointment, Ozodinobi told his former colleagues in the labour party that they would continue to ‘weep’ as they have no future in the APC.

“I will quote the Bible. When Jesus was carrying the cross to the Calvary, the woman, Veronica, was weeping. And he looked back and said, women of Israel, don’t weep for me, weep for yourself.

“I am telling those who have defected that they will continue weeping for themselves because where you have crossed over to, you don’t have a future

“My party remains one. We don’t have any crisis in my party”, he said.

According to him, “for those of them who want to malign my party before this assembly that we have a faction, there is nothing like that in existence. I wouldn’t want to say we are expecting this but when people enter political parties without an ideology, we see such level of defection.”

“People who don’t have ideology in anything they do, they don’t need to be trusted in any form, whether they are in APC or PDP. I stand here today to tell them that this rotten carrot that is dangled before them to defect to the party that has brought hunger to this country, we are waiting and at the end of the day and as the party of the people, by 2027, we will open our arms again to give them their rightful ticket.

“I am telling those who have defected that they will continue weeping for themselves because where you have crossed over to, you don’t have a future.”

Source:- Guardianng