Ifeanyi Okowa, the former governor of Delta State, has stated that former Senate President Bukola Saraki is not entitled to discuss his decision to desert to the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Governor Sheriff Oborevwori, Okowa’s predecessor, and other influential Delta State political figures formally defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC) on Monday.
Okowa’s defection to the APC, according to Saraki’s sharply worded remark, is a sign of how low politics have fallen in Nigeria, following the wave of defection that emptied the PDP’s structure into the APC.
Saraki described the former governor’s action as “unprecedented” and indicative of a more serious leadership issue, especially since Okowa was the PDP’s vice presidential candidate in the 2023 presidential election.
He said “It is shocking and unbecoming. It’s simply a sign of how low we have sunk as a polity,”
In response, Okowa stated in a Tuesday interview with Arise News that he made the right choice by defecting to the ruling APC.
Saraki, the former Senate President, had defected to the APC before rejoining the PDP, according to the former PDP vice presidential candidate.
“Two, I did not expect that somebody like Senator Bukola Saraki should be able to speak concerning me because he knows that he had also moved to the APC before and eventually returned, so he has had movement to and fro.
“So I don’t think that he has the moral right to even speak about my defection at all. I don’t want to join issues with him. But the truth is, we have a political family in the Delta State. Previously, we were in the PDP. But several things have been going on in the party, the People’s Democratic Party.
“While I do not want to join issues with people, but our stakeholders, our leaders in this state, have started to look at the events in the last several months.
“And because of the events that we see and the communications coming out from the leadership of the PDP at the moment, it did not appear to us that that was a proper political vehicle for us to continue in because it did not also appear to us that PDP was ready to be competitive in the 2027 elections.”
