A former President of the Nigerian Senate, Ken Nnamani, has announced his departure from the opposition Peoples Democratic Party he had been a staunch member since 1999.
According to a statement released on Saturday, Mr. Nnamani said he was quitting the party because the platform had abandoned “the path of its noble vision and values”.
Mr. Nnamani was elected to the Senate President in 2003, and was senate president between 2005 and 2007.
In his statement entitled, “PDP, the Burden and My Conscience,” the politician said he was fed up with the current status and direction of the PDP, and was therefore quitting “without any iota of bitterness” in his heart.
“I do not believe I should continue to be a member of the PDP as it is defined today,” Mr. Nnamani said, “This is certainly not the party I joined years ago to help change my country. I do not also believe that the PDP as it is managed today will provide an opportunity for me to continue to play the politics of principles and values which I set for myself as a young man on leaving graduate school and working for a large multinational in the United States in the 70s and 80s.
“Therefore, today I resign my membership of the PDP. In stepping out of partisan politics for the meantime, I will continue to be politically engaged. I will also continue to support the government and all the elected officers in Nigeria to repositioning the nation.
“I will also constructively criticize them when by commission or omission they take actions that could damage the prospects of transforming Nigeria into a productive, merit-based and honestly governed country.”
He recalled that on November 10, 2015, he led a delegation of concerned party leaders to the Wadata Plaza national secretariat of the party to push for change.
“We were simply dismissed,” Mr. Nnamani said. “They simply said they would get back to us. We haven’t heard from them since then.”
He said even after the party was defeated in the 2015 general election, he and other like-minded party members believed that that defeat could be transformed to victory.
“We were hopeful and continued to push for reform,” Mr. Nnamani said. “But as you can see, that hasn’t work. Those who led us to defeat have continued to hold the party down.
“In the circumstance, I have to move on and get on with my life.”