Alamieyeseigha blasts Bayelsa PDP members who defected to APC

Former governor of Bayelsa State, Chief Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, at the weekend slammed members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) defecting to the All Progressive Congress (APC) ahead of the December 5 governorship election in the state.


Alamieyeseigha, who described the defectors’ motives as selfish, also threw his weight behind the administration of Governor Seriake Dickson and his re-election ambition.

The ex- governor, who is also the Chairman of the PDP Reconciliation Committee, said the defectors were driven only by personal benefits and the desire to always remain on the corridors of power.

He said: “I am sure you are aware that some PDP members in the state are defecting to the APC. Maybe they are thinking that when they defect to APC they will get more benefits. For those members from Bayelsa that defected from PDP to APC, I pity them because APC does not even know them.

“They were not involved in the election of President Buhari because they were all in PDP. People worked hard to elect Buhari. They also worked hard to elect members of the National Assembly and state assembly. They just decided to defect to a party they don’t know anything about. Do you think those they met in APC will accommodate them wholeheartedly?”

Alamieyeseigha, who spoke in Yenagoa, said his committee interacted with most of the aggrieved members of the PDP and discovered that they were angry that some of their demands had not been met by the government.

He said the committee also found out that others were unhappy because they were denied the party’s tickets at the last general election.

“Then I asked the question, ‘must it always be you? Must these set of people always be the ones to be picked in every election’? It is not right. Leadership is a relay race. You complete your assignment you handover to another person.

“It cannot always be you alone every time. There is time for everything, so basically that is the problem. By the time we go into the party primaries all the noise you are hearing will die down, because it is only one candidate that the party will present,” he said.