A member of the national conference, Mike Ahamba, has warned opponents of President Goodluck Jonathan not to use the current national insecurity to campaign against him in the 2015 election, if he decides to contest.
Mike Ahamba
Ahamba, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and a founding member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), recently defected to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
He explained in an exclusive interview with TheNiche in Abuja that he defected from the APC because it is programmed to sink and he cannot allow his “numerous supporters” to remain in it.
“I defected from the APC, not the CPC (Congress for Progressive Change). I left the CPC and withdrew from politics. I came back to politics and all of us formed the APC,” he recounted.
“The APC started manifesting tendencies that are worse than anything I have seen in any political party, like undemocratic attitude, too much reliance on governors because they bring money, refusal to look into crises when they are emerging, inability to agree on how to run the party.
“Can you imagine a party that was formed in July last year not having an executive till now? This is the point.
“I looked at everything and said, there are two parties remaining, one is the APC, the other the PDP. The APC looks like a boat programmed to sink. I cannot carry my numerous supporters and keep them there because they are following me.
“I had to pull them out and go to the alternative, which is the PDP.”
Ahamba also expressed dismay at the dominance of Imo State Governor, Rochas Okorocha, over the party in the state.
“They handed over the APC in Imo State to Rochas Okorocha who we know cannot win in 2015. He has messed up the place. Don’t mind all these paid adverts. Of course you know they are reducing now because he doesn’t have much money any more.
“You cannot keep a governor who pays N2.2 billion to a contractor who has not done any work and think it is right. It is not possible.”
Asked for his views on the move by some Northern delegates at the confab to resurrect the abandoned property issue, Ahamba said he is opposed to any debate on it because it will divide Southern solidarity.
This is not the forum to discuss abandoned property, because it cannot be done under the constitution, he insisted.
He warned against bringing into the conference matters it is not mandated to discuss.
“If you bring that issue up now, there will be a split in the Southern solidarity. You will be fighting directly, Rivers and Bayelsa States.”
Back on Jonathan, Ahamba complained that some people are trying to politicise the security problem and blame it on Jonathan.
“If anybody wants to defeat Jonathan, let him not apply the insecurity situation because if you haven’t known what is guerilla warfare, you cannot know what we are facing.
“Guerilla warfare is insurgency that has no face. It has never been easily handled in any place, particularly in Nigeria that didn’t expect it,” he said.
