No fewer than 8,000 members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have defected to the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) in Niger State ahead of the local government election scheduled for next month in the state.
The leader of the defectors, Mohammed Sanusi Salihu, who spoke weekend in Suleja at the flagging off campaign for the local government election next month and reception for the defectors, took the CPC members by surprise as he revealed the alleged strategy they (PDP) used to rig election when they were in the PDP.
According to Salihu, “The strategy was not sometimes at the polling unit but at the collation centres where agents of other political parties were always ready to compromise.”
He said that even when sometimes the PDP would not score up to ten percent of the votes cast, the agents of the opposition parties were always willing to play along to allow them to manipulate the votes.
“What I am telling you is the strategy; even in the last election, the PDP was not voted but we worked in our usual ways. I and some of the people defecting have been in PDP since 1999, so we know PDP very well,” he added.
He stated further that when he was in PDP, government only patronised the villages with transformers and other “ petty amenities “ only during elections and would disappear until another election, saying that they were tired of the deceit and decided to join CPC.
The chairman of CPC in the state, Alhaji Umar Shuaibu explained that the defectors comprised 4,000 from Suleja, same number from Tafa, and 50 from Kontagora local government areas.