Nigeria can’t become one-party state, says Gbaja as rep dumps PDP for APC

Femi Gbajabiamila, speaker of the house of representatives, says Nigeria can’t afford to become a one-party state. 

Gbajabiamila spoke on the floor of the green chamber on Thursday.

The speaker was responding to a comment by Ado Doguwa, majority leader of the house of representatives, that two members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will defect to the All Progressives Congress (APC) “next week”.

Doguwa said this after Chisom Dike, lawmaker representing Tai/Eleme/Oyigbo federal constituency in Rivers, announced his defection to the APC during plenary session on Thursday.

“In keeping pace with the legislative notice like you rightly said, I want to put on notice that Thursday, next week, there will be two more defecting to our great party,” Doguwa said.

In response, Gbajabiamila said: “No, we can’t continue like this. We cannot have a one-party state. We can’t continue like this.”

The speaker also asked Chinedu Akabueze, clerk of the green chamber, to update the membership register to reflect the current standing of lawmakers based on recent defections.

“Clerk, please you have a responsibility to fix the register of party membership in the house, so that we will know the correct [figure], because it doesn’t look like have the same numbers we started off with two years ago,” he said.

There have been frequent defections in the lower legislative chamber in recent weeks.