South-South zonal chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Chief Dan Orbih has come out to say that the defection of Cross River state governor, Professor Ben Ayade to the All Progressives Congress, APC is unfortunate.

He recently revealed this in a telephone conversation with the press, and Nigerians have been reacting.

According to him, it is regrettable that his defection to a party that has unleashed hardship on Nigerians in the last couple of years had to happen.

He then urged the National Assembly to enact a law that would ensure the switching of political parties happens on defined conditions.

His words, “It (Ayade’s defection) is regrettable and unfortunate. How can you leave a party on whose platform you won the governorship for another that has unleashed hardship on millions of Nigerians?”

“It is time for lawmakers to come out clear on this. You can’t ride the platform of a party to success and turn around to take the mandate away to another party.”

“A law should come up to state clearly that if an elected leader is leaving the party on whose platform he was elected; he should relinquish the mandate. This will help sanitize our politics.”

What do you think?

The All Progressives Congress (APC) is a political party in Nigeria, formed on 6 February 2013 in anticipation of the 2015 elections. APC candidate Muhammadu Buhari won the presidential election by almost 2.6 million votes. Incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan conceded defeat on 31 March. This was the first time in Nigeria’s political history that an opposition political party unseated a governing party in a general election and one in which power transferred peacefully from one political party to another. In addition, the APC won the majority of seats in the Senate and the House of Representatives in the 2015 elections, though it fell shy of winning a super-majority to override the ability of the opposition People’s Democratic Party to block legislation.

Formed in February 2013, the party is the result of a merger of Nigeria’s three biggest opposition parties – the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), a faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and the new PDP – a faction of then ruling People’s Democratic Party. The resolution was signed by Tom Ikimi, who represented the ACN; Senator Annie Okonkwo on behalf of the APGA; Ibrahim Shekarau, the Chairman of ANPP’s Merger Committee; and Garba Shehu, the Chairman of CPC’s Merger Committee. Ironically, less than 2 years before the party’s historic victory in the 2015 elections, Messrs. Annie Okonkwo, Tom Ikimi and Ibrahim Shekarau resigned from the party and joined the PDP.

Prior to the formation of the APC and its victory in the 2015 elections, Muhammadu Buhari had previously contested (and subsequently lost) the Nigerian presidential elections of 2003 and 2007 as the presidential nominee of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and the 2011 Nigerian presidential election as the presidential nominee of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC).