‘We will win in Bayelsa without defectors’

THE Bayelsa People’s Democratic Party has said that the party would win the forthcoming gubernatorial election with or without those defecting to the All Progressives Congress.

The state Chairman of the party, Chief Moses Cleopas, said in a statement on Sunday that the Bayelsa people and followers were not with the defectors who according to him, lack the requisite character, principle and integrity.

Cleopas stressed in a statement on Sunday that the defecting politicians are motivated by greed and the inordinate quest for political positions being dangled to them by the APC.

The party chairman stressed that the PDP won the election convincingly in 2015 in spite of the spate of defections and would repeat the feat in the next election without such unstable characters.

The PDP chairman was reacting to a wild frivolous claim by a former Deputy Governor, Chief Peremobowei Ebebi, that he was defecting from the party because of high handedness and fraudulent primaries conducted by the leadership of PDP.

He said that the difference between the party leadership and the defecting politicians was the lack of capacity to resist the temptation of suspicious political offers and even threats.

He recalled that the government regularised Ebebi’s position as a former deputy governor and approved a monthly pension of N2.5 million, for him which he has been collecting since 2012 to date in addition to other forms of material and financial support.

He said that it was rather shocking that Ebebi, whose nominee is still a serving commissioner, could come out to launch a scathing attack on the government and the party in the search for non- existent reasons to justify his defection to the APC because of greed and inordinate quest for political offices.

Read Also: Dickson seeks violence-free poll in Bayelsa

According to the party chairman, Ebebi was among the first leaders of the party to make a strong case for Senator Douye Diri, later discovered to be his cousin, as the best of the aspirants of the PDP to support in the primaries.

He said that it was even more shocking that Ebebi who had received and endorsed Diri and his team when they visited him in his Yenagoa residence opted to accept the position of the Director General of the Chief Timi Alaibe Alaibe campaign organisation two days after.

He said that same Ebebi attended the flag off campaign rally of the PDP at the Oxbow Lake, on October 7, 2019, where he spoke in support of the PDP and its candidate.