Okowa to Saraki: You’ve no moral right to speak about my defection

A former governor of Delta State, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa, has hit back at former Senate President Bukola Saraki for faulting his defection from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), saying Saraki lacks the moral right to criticise his decision.

Okowa, who was the PDP presidential candidate in the 2023 elections and his successor, Governor Sheriff Oborevwori, had annouced their defection last week after a meeting at the Government House in Asaba.

Their defection was formalised on Monday at a rally attended by the APC national chairman, Abdullahi Ganduje, Vice President Kashim Shettima and other APC stalwarts.

Reacting to Saraki’s remarks in an interview on Arise TV on Tuesday, Okowa said it was morally wrong for the former Kwara State governor, who had criss-crossed from APC to PDP, to question his defection.

He said, “I did not expect that someone like Senator Bukola Saraki should be able to speak concerning me, because he knows that he had also moved to APC before and eventually return. So he has had movement to and fro. So, I don’t think that he has the moral right to even speak about my defection at all.”

Okowa restated that defections of PDP members, includung him and the governor, to APC was a collective decision of all political stakeholders in the state.

“Several things have been going on in the party (PDP). While I do not want to join issues with people, as stakeholders, our leaders in this state have sat down to look at the events in the last several months, and because of the events that we see and the communications coming out from the leadership of the PDP at the moment, it did not appear to us that that was a proper political vehicle for us to continue in,” he added.