Ndoma-Egba blames PDP Govs for Jonathan’s defeat

The Senate Leader, Victor Ndoma-Egba, on Sunday accused Governors of the Peoples Democratic Party across the country for President Goodluck Jonathan’s massive electoral defeat in the March 28 presidential election.

Speaking with journalists in Abuja, the senate leader pointed out that the road to the March 28/April 11 electoral loss of President Jonathan and PDP actually started from the December 2014 primaries when the governors deliberately shut out those they considered “unwanted candidates” and imposed their own choices on the party.

He said, “The resultant effect, was exodus from the PDP without any corresponding influx”.

Mr. Ndoma-Egba, who is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, had on Friday, delivered a paper, “Majority and minority parties in the Legislature: party defection (cross carpeting in the legislature)” at the induction course for legislators-elect of the 8th National Assembly in Abuja.

He said that aggrieved PDP members defected to the opposition parties because their former party muscled them out.

According to him, “In the case of the PDP recently, politicians left because they felt that they did not fit within the governors’ calculations”.

He continued: “In my view, since every politics is local, each case should be treated on its merit. Unbridled defection has the capacity of not only overheating the polity and upsetting the entire political configuration but destabilizing the polity.

“While the law has clearly settled the circumstances under which a person elected on the platform of a political party can switch parties, nothing restricts those who are not in the legislature from switching parties.

“The phenomenon will endure for as long as ownership of political parties is not with its members but with, as in the case of the PDP, the governors.

“Governors (especially of the PDP) have become so over bearing that it is only their wishes that rule. The party (at the national level) suborns its constitution, guidelines and even court orders to please the whims and fancies of governors who appropriate the will of members and impose theirs in its stead”.

The senator, who will not be returning to the red chamber, advised that the best antidote against PDP suffering another disgraceful outing in 2019 was to stem further defections by ensuring “internal party democracy” as a party can only give the nation what it has.

“A party that does not have internal party democracy can only falsely promise the nation democracy”, he added.