Dele Momodu: Gale of defections giving Tinubu false sense of progress

Dele Momodu, publisher of Ovation magazine, says President Bola Tinubu may have a distorted perception of his administration’s performance due to the wave of defections to the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Speaking on Soni Irabor Live, a programme on News Central, on Saturday, Momodu said party-switching in Nigeria is not underpinned by ideology and only fuels public resentment.

“If you are joining a new party, you should be able to tell us what that party has done for the people and then it becomes a lot easier for us to follow you so that even the doubting and unbelieving Thomases can follow you and say ‘oh, this party has done extremely well’,” he said.

“But everywhere you turn in Nigeria, people are crying. I have never seen this level of bitterness and I hope the president is taking this criticism in good faith.

“I hope people are telling him the situation of things out there because there is no way he can feel or know it. He who feels it knows it.”

Momodu said Tinubu might not fully grasp the severity of Nigeria’s current predicament.

“So I am not sure that the president actually knows what is going on because if you see all the governors decamping to your party, won’t you think you are the greatest thing that happened to Nigeria?” he asked.

“You can’t blame the man if he feels that way.”

Asked about the legal position on defection, Momodu said Nigeria’s constitution has long been ignored.

“But you know that we’ve thrown our constitution to the Atlantic Ocean long ago. The constitution has been thrown overboard, which is unfortunate,” he said.

“The constitution says clearly that if somebody elected on the platform of the party decides to decamp, then he would have to vacate that seat.”

He said public officeholders who defect should be prepared to relinquish their positions.

“So any man who is tired of his political party should be ready to forfeit everything and take it in good faith. You cannot continue to live as if you are still in power,” he said.

The former presidential hopeful said it should be left for the party in power to determine who represents it.

“The party in power is the one who has the right to define who will represent them,” he said.

“But today, people cross carpet. You can wake up with APC, and in the evening, you are in the PDP, then the following morning, you are back to APC. It’s just unfortunate.”

On Thursday, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, former political adviser in the presidency, described the APC as a “political refugee camp”.

He said the ruling party is being overwhelmed by defectors who are either chasing political positions or fleeing from prosecution.

“With all this party bulging with people running away from prosecution, people looking for offices, the APC is growing with a lot of the wrong people,” he said.