PDP to Matawalle: Defect to APC, lose your seat

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has threatened to go to court to recover its mandate if Zamfara State Governor, Bello Matawalle defects from the party to the All Progressives Congress (APC) as is being speculated.

Matawalle is expected to join APC this Tuesday. But PDP said it amounts to the governor vacating his seat.

PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbobdiyan, at a press conference in Abuja, said: “No law allows him to cross over to any other party with the governorship mandate statutorily given to the PDP through the ballot box, as already established by the provision of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) and the standing judgement of the Supreme Court.”

The Supreme Court had declared that APC, by virtue that its primary was flawed, did not participate in the 2019 Zamfara governorship election.

Ologbobdiyan argued that: “A combined reading of Section 221 of the 1999 Constitution as the pronouncements of the Supreme Court in Faleke v. INEC (2016) is clear in holding that it is the political party that stands for election.”

He warned members of the National and Zamfara State House of Assembly, not to allow themselves to be pushed into losing their seats as the provisions of the constitution is very clear in barring lawmakers from cross carpeting, except in a situation of a division in the political party upon which platform they were elected.