By Mike Odiakose, Abuja

Ahead of the February 2025 local government election in Osun State, over 500 members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) yesterday defected to the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Ifedayo local government area.

The defectors were received into the PDP by the State Chairman, Sunday Bisi who noted that developments in the state have convinced a lot of APC members to leave the party for the PDP, insisting that many are still coming before the year’s end.

The state chairman said the forthcoming local government elections slated for February 2025 will end APC’s existence in Osun.

Assuring the mammoth crowd, Bisi appealed to all and sundry to continue supporting the administration of Governor Ademola Adeleke.

He noted that what the current administration has done in the last two years surpasses that of the APC in the state.

Welcoming the new defectors, he assured them that in the PDP, there is nothing like discrimination.

“I want to assure those who joined our party today, in PDP, we don’t discriminate. Let’s join hands with those you met to move the party forward. There are lots of goodies on ground for all of us.

“Let me assure you all that come February 2025, PDP will coast to victory at the polls. Let us mobilise members and non-members for that election. We want to use the election to tell APC that Osun is not like Edo or Ondo. No rigging templates will work here. We are fully prepared.

Speaking on behalf of the defectors, Goke Folayan said part of what informed their decision to join the PDP is that Governor Adeleke has proven his critics wrong.

He said, “nobody could ever imagine that the Governor would perform and today, he is delivering on his promises to the people, making life more bearable for the people.”

He said, “It is sad that my former party, APC couldn’t remember Ifedayo local government for the whole twelve years they spent. They keep deceiving our people, making vague promises. 

“In just two years, the abandoned Ora-Igbomina water scheme is being reconstructed by Governor Adeleke.

“Our coming to the PDP is to join hands together with those we met to move our local government forward. By the grace of God, Kayode Atolagbe and all his councillors will win. This will send the remnant of APC members in Ifedayo into complete oblivion.”

The high point of the event was the handing over of PDP flags by the state chairman to the Chairmanship candidate, the vice chairmanship and other councilorship candidates.

The Abia Chapter of the INEC Staff Welfare Association (ISWA) has warned its members to uphold the integrity of the commission and guard against the culture of manipulating election results.

The Abia Chairman of the association, Mr Collins Eze, gave the advice at the group’s general meeting and end-of-year party in Umuahia.

Speaking in an interview with newsmen on the sideline of the ceremony, Eze said that the staff members were adequately aware of their enormous responsibility and should ensure free, fair and credible elections.

He said: “We have also told our colleagues that anywhere they find themselves they should make sure that they do the needful by ensuring transparency in the conduct of elections.

“We have always told them not to allow anybody to induce them with money to manipulate election results.

“I’m happy that they have been building the capacity of our colleagues on election processes.

“So, in the coming years, we won’t have any problem in ensuring free, fair and peaceful elections.”

He said that the end-of-year party was special as it afforded them the opportunity “to wine and dine together as well as thank God for sustaining them in 2024”.

Eze said that his leadership had introduced various means of assisting members in dire financial needs by providing platforms to solicit suppory for them.

He expressed gratitude to members for their support and cooperation, describing them as the “secret behind the success of this administration”.

He said that 34 of at least 350 staff members of the commission in the state retired from service in 2024.

According to him, the development has placed a huge financial burden on the association, in terms of their welfare and entitlement as members.

Report says that each member received a carton of tomato paste as Christmas gift from the association. (NAN)

A chieftain of All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr Osita Okechukwu, has told the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to be thankful to God that its 16-year administration was not probed by the successive APC-led governments.Okechukwu stated this on Tuesday in Abuja, while reacting to a statement by PDP congratulating Ghanaians for the conduct of free, fair and transparent general elections.

Report says that PDP had, in a statement, said that the verdict of the people of Ghana in the presidential election was a signal to the APC that its days were numbered. The party’s National Publicity Secretary, Debo Ologunagba, had said in the statement that the power of the people in Nigeria, just like in Ghana, would ‘surely prevail and end the APC’s oppressive rule’.This, he said, would “return Nigeria to the path of good governance, security, political stability and economic prosperity on the platform of the PDP in 2027.”However, in his reactions to Ologunagba’s statement, Okechukwu said that the PDP clan should thank God that former President Muhammadu Buhari and President Bola Tinubu, out of sheer statesmanship, had refused to probe ‘the 16 locus years of PDP administrations’.Okechukwu, a former Director-General of Voice of Nigeria (VON), described the 16 years of PDP administrations as ones full of squandering and lack of plan.He said that Nigeria had yet to recover from the humongous culture of impunity and trust deficit planted by PDP on the Nigerian soil.Okechukwu said corruption was among the culture of impunity, saying it governed the privatisation of Nigeria’s electricity value chain, a key element in the country’s industrialisation drive.“Another is the blatant rigging of the 2007 general elections which the foremost beneficiary, President Umaru Yar’Adua, out of good conscience and noble magnanimity, publicly acknowledged the malfeasance which characterised his victory,” he said.Okechukwu also mentioned what he called conscienceless sale of the legislative and ministerial quarters, the annual rentage of which, he said, was bleeding the country’s treasury.“Another one is the neglect of $23 billion Greenfield Refinery, which could have saved over $70 billion expended on importation of refined petroleum products and which simulated the economic hardship of today,” he said.On why, for nine years, the APC administration could not fix those challenges, he recalled the efforts made by the Buhari administration to reopen talks on the Greenfield Refinery which, according to him, the Chinese regrettably rebuffed.The former VON director-general said that Nigerians were not in a hurry to forget the deliberate breach of the rotational convention of president from the north to the south.He said that the country could not also forget the utter disregard for Section 7 of the PDP’s constitution which expressly mandated zoning.Okechukwu advised the PDP not to insult the sensibilities of Nigerians by assuming that citizens would easily forget how they were put in the harms way.He said that PDP should thank God that Buhari and Tinubu did not want to probe them, adding “that’s why Nigerians cannot decipher the difference between the two political parties.” (NAN)