Former Jigawa Governor Alhaji Sule Lamido has advised members of the Peoples Democratic Party PDP that no matter what happen they shouldn’t leave the party.
He said it is not shameful if People’s Democratic Party (PDP) defectors want to return to the fold.
Lamido, who stated this on Monday while addressing Jigawa PDP stalwarts from across the state, during a party meeting to replace officers at the state, zonal or ward level that have either died or changed parties, said that, “in politics, there is no shame when one eats their vomit because there shouldn’t be any compulsion in one’s political ideology.”
The ex governor said those who left the party because “we have lost elections, would soon realise that it is only the PDP that was built on real people-oriented ideology against those political parties that hinge their merit on individuals.”
He beckoned on party defectors to return, admonishing that “it is the choice of a son who soils his mother’s bedspread to wait for the sheet to dry and return to the same bed or change to another bed entirely.”
The PDP, Lamido said, is like a mother and those leaving the party should be treated as sons who should be welcomed back home.
He added that the PDP was formed to survive with or without powerful individuals, explaining that it does not matter who leaves the party fold because their departure will not ‘kill’ the party.
He noted that the death of Dr Alex Ekweme and Solomon Lar or the decamping of Barnabas Gemade and Audu Ogbe, all former party Chairmen, did not reduce the party’s strength, adding to the list, “former President Obasanjo that dumped the party after he was picked from the gulag and made President.”
He said that by 2023, Nigerians would witness the demise of political parties build around certain personalities, “so it wouldn’t matter if people such as Rotimi Amaechi, Abdullahi Adamu, Danjuma Goje left.”
Explaining further that the PDP had survived even when Atiku Abubakar and Rabi’u Kwankwaso had dumped the party after serving as Vice President and Governor for eight years, respectively; only for them to return – an indication, he said, that suggests that it is the party itself, not powerful individuals, that matters.
He urged party members to practice politics that promotes social developments such as provision of water, health care, education and other infrastructures that would be of benefit to the people.
The former governor, however, advised supporters not to leave the party no matter what happened “even if I leave the PDP don’t leave but stay,” he pleaded.
