The likelihood of Senate President Bukola Saraki defecting to the PDP to contest the 2019 presidential election is making many of his former partymen have sleepless nights in Kwara.
Kwara PDP Chairman Akogun Iyiola Oyedepo on Wednesday led some party members to the PDP National Secretariat, Abuja, to plead with National Chairman Uche Secondus not to allow Saraki to hijack the party.
Oyedepo told newsmen after the meeting that it was wrong to allow Saraki to “have his way” after dumping the party at that critical moment in the build up to 2015 election.
“We are apprehensive of what the national leadership can do to welcome somebody who had gone away from the party and is being given a royal welcome into the party,” he said.
“It is not Saraki’s coming that create any fear; it is whatever the national leadership can do to encourage him to seize the party’s structure from established people of Kwara State.
According to him, whoever is returning must respect the structure of the party and cooperate appropriately.
“We will welcome Saraki with open hands if he comes to be part of the party. We can’t say somebody should not join our party.
” You cannot dismantle the structure of a party because someone is joining the party,” Oyedepo said.
Although Saraki has not in anyway indicated je wants to ditch the APC. Undertones of defection in an interview his protégé and Kwara Gov. Abdulfatah Ahmed granted recently make many believe the Saraki political machine is about to change direction.
“If our people insist that they want to us to remain, we remain; if they want us to go, we go. When we decided to leave the PDP for the APC; it was an inclusively designed position,” the governor said in an interview with a daily newspaper.