Not fewer than 300 ex-cabinet members and elected officials at various political offices at national and subnational levels have resigned the membership of their respective parties in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and moved en masse to the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
The chairman of the 36-year-old political party in Nigeria, Alhaji Shehu Gabam, disclosed this in an interview in Abuja.
Gabam, who decried the undemocratic tendencies of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s All Progressives Congress administration, stated that the incalculable damage the president is causing to the country’s democratic institutions must be resisted.
According to him, while the Social Democratic Party (SDP) would welcome all politicians who believe in rescuing the country from its descent into dictatorship, it would not accept any preconditions from any politician before joining the party.
“I have over 300 resignation letters from different states of the federation. Some of them were ministers, some were senators, some were members of the House of Representatives, and some were governors who have resigned and joined the SDP.
“It’s just that we don’t make noise about it. But we have the resignation letters. Some of the resignation letters are on social media all over the place. So our doors are open. And our conditions are simple. You want to join the SDP? It is simple. Go to your ward and register. Collect your membership card. Then you are a member of the SDP. We will also send updated membership registers to INEC for record purposes. And then you are free to contest from councillor to president. There is no obstruction at all.”
Gabam added, “What we said is that we don’t want preconditions because preconditions lead to crises. They are a foundation for crises. And we say we don’t want mergers because mergers are designed to create crises. We don’t have the resources to meet your conditions. For instance, anybody who is coming with a group will say, ‘You give us this, you give us that.’ We don’t have it.
“We are trying to build an institution that will accommodate all sorts of Nigerians, irrespective of where they come from. When we were building this party, we didn’t give conditions. People who are sacrificing here are not on salaries, okay? Nobody should come here and tell us, ‘Oh, we have conditions.’ If you have conditions, you will return to the party you were in before. It’s because you lost control of where you were. Your crisis was too much. You are looking for an environment that is conducive. If you are coming into a conducive environment, don’t come with a virus. That’s what we are saying. We are welcoming everyone,” the national chairman of the SDP stated.
He noted that while it is common to have crises in a political party due to the contest of ideas, it does not mean that the party leadership should set itself up for one.
“Party is about crises and crisis management. It takes a fool to think there will be no crisis. But the capacity to contain the crisis is what defines a political party or leadership. So we are not afraid of crises, wherever they may come from.
“We had it before. Probably you forgot. We were in court for five or six years. The court struck it out, okay? We went up to the Supreme Court between Donald Duke and Jerry Gana.
“If you read the judgement of the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court, it’s the same reference that other parties are using today. We liberated some of those black spots,” he stated.
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