The Minister for information, Labran Maku has said that the Peoples Democratic Party had become stronger as it had shed the weight that was making it weak. He said most of the members who left the PDP to join the All Progressives Congress where the problem with the party as they were either troublesome or quarrelsome.
He made the statements at the end of the Federal Executive Committee meeting in Abuja yesterday.
Maku said: “No party will be happy to lose its members to another party because every party will wish that it is able to return all its members. This is because your members mean that you have a number. No club, no company, nobody wants to lose a member. So, it is not something you beat your chest and say you are happy when your members leave.
“But I have always made a point that sometimes you need to lose weight to get strength. That’s exactly what has happened in the PDP. When a number of these people are leaving the PDP, I say the party will be healthier in the long run.
“First of all, if you look at those who have left the party, some of them have caused all the headaches in the PDP. They have been the ones who attacked the party; they are very quarrelsome. They have oversized egos. Some of them cannot stay under the same roof with anybody for one week without the top blowing off.
“A number of the people who left, if you take a look at the history of our party and look at their antecedent, you will see that they are migrants. They keep migrating from one place to another. A party needs to have members who believe in its ideology, who settle down because they believe in the party. A party is not just a market for people to stand for elections.
“For a number of people who are leaving, they see the party as a market for elections. A number of them will come in because they want to stand for elections and, if they lose, they run out.
“Political parties, after 15 years of democracy in our country, must begin to settle down. Let us know those who believe in the party. Let us know those who truly believe in the policy and programmes of the party, not because they have an electoral ambition but because they want the party as an organisation that will develop society, improve its policy and improve the country.”