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Over 3,400 members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Ondo State have defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC).
The defectors were loyalists of Chief Olusola Oke, former candidate of the PDP in the October 20, 2012 governorship election in the state, who had earlier defected to APC.
At the event to mark the defection held in Igbokoda, the headquarters of Ilaje Local Government Area of the state on Saturday, the defectors said they took the decision to leave PDP because of the mismanagement the party had perpetrated in the country in the past 16 years of its reign.
Oke said the time had come for all Ilaje sons and daughters to dump the PDP, adding that the party had brought untold hardship to the people in the country.
“I am ashamed of being a member of a party that has plunged the country into calamity. With the revelation coming out now, I have to apologise to my teeming supporters and Nigerians that my former party brought Nigeria to her knees,” Oke told the defectors.
Oke, who is a former National Legal Adviser of the PDP, declared that the change that had taken root at the Federal level, would soon berth in the state in the 2016 governorship election and the local government poll later in the year.
He said, “The change that had taken over Nigeria will come to Ondo State. This is the time for change in Ondo State.
It is not good for this state to be in opposition to the Federal Government and hence this state must be in tandem with the government at the centre. We want to take over the government both at the state and local government levels.”
Speaking on behalf of other defectors, Mr. Glory Okuntade, a former leader of the PDP in the riverside areas of Ilaje, said they were leaving PDP because they had nothing to show their teeming supporters in the area in terms of development that their membership of PDP had brought to them.
