BREAKING NEWS: PDP SUFFERED ANOTHER DEAD BLOW AS TAMBUWAL FINALLY DUMP PDP FOR APC AND VOW NOT TO STEP DOWN AS SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE. PDP HOW MARKETS??? Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, will today take the final plunge into the All Progressives Congress (APC), putting to rest several months of speculations that he would dump the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).A dependable source in the National Assembly which made this known to Blueprint in Abuja last night said the Speaker has taken cognisance of the fact that politics in today’s Nigeria has become grassroots-based and with the Speaker’s immediate constituency of Sokoto state already predominantly APC, he had no choice but to quite the ruling PDP. The source went on to point out that it would be out of place for the Speaker to remain in the PDP when “more than 90% of his constituents belong to the APC” and that if he failed to decamp he would have let his own people down. The source said: “Knowing how passionate the Speaker is about his constituents, it would be wrong to assume he would not eventually move to the APC”.The source added that it would be unthinkable if the incumbent governor of Sokoto state would ever work for the victory of the PDP in the 2015 general elections and Tambuwal “is never a misguided risk-taker by any political standards.”“Both the people of his immediate constituency and the government are looking up to Tambuwal to show exemplary leadership by aligning with the electorate’s wish. Clearly, the PDP will lose Sokoto.”Asked what happens to the seat of the Speaker after Tambuwal’s defection, the source argued that the1999 Constitution did not say the Speaker of the House must come from a specific political party, stressing that Tambuwal has vowed to retain his seat notwithstanding the defection. Investigations showed that at the House of Representatives there are roughly 173 serving members of the APC, all of whom are also loyal to Speaker Tambuwal. The PDP membership strength in the house stands at 174, giving the party a narrow margin of only one member, which the source said means nothing, “considering the possibility of many more PDP members of the House waiting in the wings to join Tambuwal.”Another source in the lower chamber of the National Assembly said of the decampment out of the PDP in the House: “Nigerians have seen nothing yet. Many of us have simply been waiting for the Speaker to take the lead and now is that historic moment.”The Speaker’s defection is seen by many analysts as yet another big blow to the PDP’s 2015 calculations.
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 14:57:22 +0000