Barely 24 hours after the Governor of Bayelsa, Diri Douye, announced his resignation from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Sen. Konbowei Benson Friday (Bayelsa-Central), defected to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) on Thursday.
President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, read Konbowei’s defection letter to senators on the floor in Abuja.
The defection signals the next political direction of Governor Douye himself, whose destination is believed to be the APC as well.
His defection further shored up the numerical strength of the APC to 74, giving the party an overwhelming majority out of a total of 109 senators.
As Akpabio read the defection letter, the immediate-past governor of Bayelsa state, Senator Henry Seriake Dickson, reacting in disbelief, simply packed his documents and walked out of the chamber.
Akpabio, noticing that Dickson was leaving the chamber, called his attention that, as the leader of the Bayelsa Caucus, he shouldn’t be leaving when ‘such an important letter is being read.’
Responding to Akpabio, Senator Dickson, who represents Bayelsa-West, said he was leaving because he had more important things to attend to outside the chamber.
But, in the chamber, APC senators celebrated the decision of Konbowei, as they embraced and shook hands with him in turns.
Only on Wednesday, Dickson, faulting the gale of defections to the APC, warned that democracy could be the ultimate loser in the absence of a virile opposition.
Dickson had argued that the solution to the crisis rocking the PDP was not for members to defect to the APC.
The former governor had stated, ‘We all know the PDP has issues, but those issues should be solved by its leaders. They are the ones who created them.
‘I remain standing in the PDP, the party that gave my people and the Niger Delta the opportunity to produce a Vice President, an Acting President, and a President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. This other party cannot do that.
‘If, however, we do not succeed in saving the PDP, then we will be part of a collective decision; but that should not be to join the ruling party.
‘I believe there must always be opposition. A democracy without opposition ceases to be a democracy; it becomes dictatorship and totalitarianism.’