A former Chairman of the Economic and Financial
Crimes Commission, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, on Sunday
justified his defection from the opposion All
Progressives Congress to the ruling Peoples
Democratic Party, saying the APC was not better than
the PDP.
Ribadu, who was the 2011 presidential candidate of
the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria, forerunner
of the APC, said there was no difference between the
PDP and APC, in terms of the character of the people
who constituted both parties.
The ex-EFFC chairman, who spoke through his
spokesman, Mr. Abdulaziz Abdulaziz, said this while
fielding questions from one of our correspondents in
Abuja.
He said, “In Nigeria, especially in politics, you can’t
say that this is an exclusive party for the people who
are thieves or this is for good people.
“It’s just like saying that all Yorubas are this or all
Igbos are this. In every group of people, there must
be good people and there are bad people. Of course,
the good may be more than the bad or the bad may
be more than the good in any group.
“But there is no any party that is exclusively for the
good people or for the bad people.”
He said that his defection was not borne out of his
desperation to realise his political ambition but was
based on his patriotic zeal to serve the country and
its people.
Abdulaziz said, “It is not true that he (Ribadu) was
desperate to realise his political ambition. This is
because this decision was taken in the overriding
interest of serving the people.
“What matters for him is service. That is why even
when he was a member of the opposition party,
when government asked him to serve the country,
he accepted the offer and he did a wonderful job
that everybody hailed except those who don’t want
change in the system.
“If you are ready to serve the people, sometimes
you will have to do something that is not even
palatable to yourself.”
But one of Ribadu’s close political associates in Yola
told one of our correspondents that Ribadu’s
defection had more to do with his governorship
ambition and the alleged failure of the APC to give
him the expected support and compensate him for
his “sacrifices” for the party.
The source said part of Ribadu’s sacrifices, which he
said the APC had failed to reciprocate, was his offer
to step down for the then presidential candidate of
the Congress for Progressive Change, Gen.
Muhammadu Buhari in the 2011 election and also his
role in “wooing some governors to join the APC”.
The source linked Ribadu’s defection to his
unresolved grievances against the APC, which the
source made the ex-presidential candidate to
succumb to pressure mounted on him by people,
including the Chairman of the PDP, Adamu Mu’azu;
Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and a
Principal Secretary in the Presidency, Hassan Tukur,
to join the PDP.
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