Fresh crisis in PDP: CUPP crashing, Donald Duke seeks SDP presidential ticket

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is on the path of fresh crisis over the process of electing the party’s candidate for the 2019 presidential election. The consideration of a consensus candidate is beginning threaten the alliance with 34 other political parties which formed the Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP), penultimate week. The agreement binding the political parties to sponsor one candidate for the 2019 presidential election has come under severe threat.

Earlier, Professor Jerry Gana has picked nomination form to contest the presidential election on the platform of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). While that decision is yet to be reviewed in accordance with SDP national Chairman, Chief Olu Falae, earlier proposal for a singular candidate for the Coalition at the signing of the CUPP MoU in Abuja, Donald Duke, a member of the Nigeria Intervention Movement (NIM) and also PDP member, on Tuesday defected from the PDP to the (SDP) to contest for presidential; ticket of the party for 2019 elections.

The former Cross River State Governor, visiting SDP national secretariat in Abuja on Tuesday remarked that he was a loyal member of the PDP for 20 years but decided to leave after the party lost focus.

National; Daily gathered that Duke explained that he left the PDP because the party has derailed and lost its values and was not the same party he joined back then, protesting the decision of the PDP to zone the Presidency to the North.

“I was a member of the PDP but over the years we saw the fortunes and the values of the party dwindle. When a former President walks out of his party, you know there is something. Over the years, you will see that it lost its values and became a shadow of itself.

“That the PDP is zoning today is actually a betrayal of those ideals it started off with because it was a national organisation. Today, in some parts of the country, it is hardly in existence,” Duke declared.

The SDP chieftain also chided the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) Federal Government for failing to improve the lives of Nigerians.

The CUPP is beginning to show clear signs of crashing before the 2019 general elections.