Ex-Senate minority leader and former governor of Akwa Ibom State, Senator Godswill Akpabio, has clarified his statement that he did not defect to the All Progressives Congress (APC), but only moved to the party.
Akpabio, who represents Akwa Ibom North-West at the National Assembly, told Vanguard that the same people were determined to ruin the party to bring down the government of President Muhammadu Buhari just because of their selfish interests.
Queried why he defected to APC, Akpabio said: “I did not defect, I moved to the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the national interest especially if you look at what is happening at the national level.
“I was surprised that people who founded the APC were the same people determined to ruin that party, to bring down the government of President Buhari just because election is approaching, so that they could go and contest under another platform.
“I felt there is need for us to have a country before we talk about elections. People say statesmen think about the next generation while politicians think of the next election.
“I saw a trend where a lot of us are now becoming politicians thinking only of the next election without thinking of the next generation.
“I moved in the national interest, to stabilize the polity and in order to support the current administration.
“And I think that, to a large extent, my intention was achieved and so it was referred to as ‘uncommon defection’ because it was one defection that stopped a lot of defections.
“I was not thinking whether I will win election in 2019 when I was moving because, at that time, my state was totally PDP; when I moved, people were shocked but today, less than two months after, the entire state, 98%, has turned APC.”
Speaking further on the forthcoming general election, the former governor said there will be no war in the country and added that only people who want war will see war.
He said, “There will be no war in Nigeria in 2019, people should not think of election as war. Election should not be war.
“I appreciate that question because recently I made a statement which I love to make.
“I said, ‘Warsaw saw war’ because the political leadership in PDP in Akwa Ibom had said that the current administration should recruit people and prepare for war, that 2019 will be war and that only the fittest would survive.
“So, the youths and some elders of the APC met me to say that people are calling for war.
“And I told them that people calling for war have never seen war and that, in those days, even when the worst enemies of mankind, Hitler, went to Poland which capital is Warsaw to wage war, he thought it was going to be a cheap thing but it wasn’t.”