The All Progressives Congress (APC) on Tuesday evening accused the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of tempting members of the National Assembly and others who had decamped from the PDP with foreign currencies to get them back.
The opposition party said this after losing five members of the House of Representatives that had earlier defected from the PDP with some of their colleagues.
The APC described the defection of the five members on Tuesday as induced by the lure of dollars, an accusation the PDP described as unfounded.
The five APC members who announced their defection to the PDP on Tuesday are Ladan Bichi (Kano), Abdulsalam Adamu (Kano), Sani Galadinma (Zamfara), Ibrahim Gusau (Zamfara) and Umar Bature (Sokoto); while Isa Ashiru, who represents Kaduna State, decamped from the PDP to APC, thus giving the PDP a lead of between 178 and 179 members, while the APC dropped to between 167 and 168 members.
According to the APC, the PDP is spending public funds to lure back some of the federal lawmakers who have defected from the ruling party to the APC, saying this is a political horse trading carried too far.
In a statement issued in Lagos on Tuesday by its Interim National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said the PDP, in an unprecedented show of desperation, has rolled out a mouth-watering enticement package that promises $2m to each senator who returns to the PDP, $1m to each member of the House of Representatives, and $10m to each ‘leader’ who abandons the APC for PDP.
It said the price tag for the federal legislators from Rivers State is even higher, at $5m each even though the party did not state the source of its information.
It however said there is no cause for alarm, adding that no amount of inducements would stop the change that is in the horizon, “because the long-suffering people of Nigeria are ready and eager to vote out the PDP next year”.
The party added that the five House of Representatives members who took the PDP’s “killer bait” by defecting to APC were neither forced to do so nor given any incentive beyond the rare opportunity offered to them to be a part of the looming change.
It expressed the hope that the double defectors would declare “the blood money” they have collected from the PDP to those who voted them into office, and also pretend to be democratic by sharing the money with them.
“Nigerians can now see why their country has gone broke, why the allocation to states from the Federation Account has continued to dwindle, and why infrastructures have either remained decrepit or non-existent. It is not difficult to imagine the number of boreholes that $10m can sink, or how far such a huge amount will go in building cottage hospitals and health clinics”, APC said.
“Things are bound to get worse in the days ahead because the desperate PDP will, more and more, use public funds to try to change the course of history. We therefore urge Nigerians to remain resolute in the face of what will be a wave of inducements never before seen in these climes, because there is no going back on the plan to vote out the PDP next year and save Nigeria from a rapacious and inept leadership”.
Huhuonline.com reported earlier in the day that five members of All Progressive Congress (APC) in the House of Representatives from Kano, Sokoto, Zamfara and Kaduna States decamped to Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), leaving the control of the lower chamber in the hands of PDP with 178 members against APC’s 168
