A former member of the House of Representatives, Ossai Nicholas Ossai, has blamed the deepening crisis in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on conflicts of interest and personal ambitions of those meant to strengthen the party.
Ossai who criticised the party’s elders and founding members, accusing them of failing to take action to restore the PDP, argued that their inaction has contributed to the party’s current struggles.
The former lawmaker, who represented the Ndokwa/Ukwani Federal Constituency of Delta State under the PDP, officially defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC) on Wednesday.
According to Ossai, efforts to resolve the party’s internal divisions have failed due to sharp ideological and political conflicts.
“There are conflicts, sharp conflicts of ideas—both constitutional and political. Pure conflicts of ideas on two opposing issues that are very difficult to reconcile,”
He said, “I’ve been with PDP since 1999, and we have tried as much as possible to fix PDP, especially when they have issues of leadership in the past. The National Assembly, who are PDP members tried to strengthen PDP, but I believe today that strengthening has been removed from the hands of the parliament.
“Among the gladiators who are founding fathers of PDP too, have tried as much as possible to break the umbrella. So the centre cannot hold, and judging from the fact that all political parties in Nigeria are centralists in programmes and policies, there’s no sharp ideological programs that you can say you can separate from each political party today in the country.’
Speaking on why he joined the APC, he said, “People want solution and it is the person who will give solution to the people that you have to converge on. APC gives solution through President Tinubu to the people. That’s why we are converging. Tinubu is the personality that is bringing progressive directions to this generation. So we converge on him”he stated.
