The All Progressives Grand Alliance candidate for Abia North Senatorial District in the 2015 general elections, Chief David Onuoha Bourdex, has warned that posterity will not forgive politicians who have formed the habit of defecting from one political party to another at the slightest opportunity.
Bourdex said that such unscrupulous politicians should know that the younger ones were watching them and that their actions were being recorded for the future.
The APGA chieftain stated this while speaking in an exclusive interview with our correspondent in Umuhia, the Abia State capital, against the backdrop of the recent defection of a member of the party in the state House to the ruling Peoples Democratic Party.
I would want them to know that the younger ones are watching them
He stressed that political office holders should always strive not to betray the trust reposed in them by the electorate, who voted them into office in the first place.
Bourdex noted that defecting from one political party to the other was not the solution to whatever challenges encountered by a politician in a party that provided him the platform to win an election into a public office.
He urged the remaining APGA members in the state Assembly to remain steadfast and forget the idea of defecting from their current party in order not to jeopardise their political future.
ise them to remember how they got to where they are today in the first place. I will also want them to know that the younger ones are watching them and that it is always good to be grateful to the hands that helped you when you needed help. I don’t believe running from one party to another is a good thing for any politician or anybody, at all. For instance, in business, one of the very important rules to success is that you must identify what you are good at and stick to it. If you won an election on the platform of APGA, for goodness sake, stay there and build that foundation, nurture it, preserve it. Build your foundation in such a way that those who took you there, will again to so in 2019.
“So, I will advise those who are still in APGA to remain and remember how they got there in the first place. The truth of the matter is that if you defect from a party to another, you are not very likely to carry all your supporters with you to the new party. Some will refuse to go with you. That is the truth of the matter. And if you begin to lose some of your supporters two years to the election, then you know what that means.”
The APGA chieftain added that though he belonged to an opposition party, he would not advocate politics of bitterness.
He stressed that it had become imperative for all the citizens of the state to cooperate with the Peoples Democratic Party administration of Governor Okezie Ikpeazu to move the state forward.
“We are politicians and not enemies. And the fact that the court has affirmed him as the governor of the state does not change our position as a different political party. But it does affirm that we have only one governor now. And since the state is our collective heritage, it is also our collective responsibility to encourage him to work for the citizenry. So that was the message I was passing, that people should come together and support him for the wellbeing of the state so that he will be able to have that conducive working environment that a leader will need to perform, so that if he does not perform, we will now be standing on a legitimate ground to now complain that he did not do anything.”
