12th February, 2014
Stephen Oni/ Ilorin
Mohammed Dele Belgore, governorship candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria in the central Nigerian state of Kwara, in the 2011 election, has left the party, now part of the new coalition that formed the All Progressives Congress.
Belgore, a senior advocate of Nigeria, declared for the ruling Peoples Democratic Party,PDP today.
He joined active politics in 2010 and emerged the gubernatorial candidate of the ACN. He was picked by the party’s hierachy over Architect Lola Ashiru, a financier of ACN in the state.
The politician,amid his supporters, announced his defection from APC to the PDP at his campaign office along AbdulRasaq Road ,GRA, Ilorin,saying he decided to leave the APC because of the party leadership’s decision to team up with “oppressors”
Though Belgore was silent on his governorship ambition, earlier speakers repeatedly referred to him as the next governor of the state.
Belgore said his defection became necessary because the leadership of APC has let him and his supporters down by the way and manner they handled the defection of members of PDP to APC in kwara state.
He said his declaration was symbolic because people have waited with baited breath,” for us to make a pronouncement on our political future”. “The expectations and the anxieties are understandable, given the happenings in the APC which we laboured so hard to nurture to a party of choice in Kwara from its ACN days,”he added.
He noted that hope had risen that with the birth of APC, “our struggle for socio- economic development of our dear state which we began in 2010, would be better served under a stronger and broader political platform”, lamenting that the hope suddenly evaporated very quickly. He said it was sad that an alliance of those who yearn for change and development and those who desire to maintain the status quo of oppression and denial of opportunity was suddenly foisted upon us.
Other notable defectors to the PDP in the state were Senator Gbemisola Saraki and businessman, Abdulrahman Abdulrazak, who contested for the governorship position in 2011, using the platform of the CPC, also now part of APC.
The All Progressives Congress ,APC, in Kwara state, described the defection of Belgore to the Peoples Democratic Party ,PDP, as a good riddance.
The state chairman of APC, Hon. Ishola Balogun-Fulani, said “the party in the state sees the exit of Belgore as a good riddance to bad rubbish because he is more of a liability than asset in the political chess game of Kwara state.
“He is more of an ethnic card player than a politician who is sincere to serve the people. If Belgore is truly a progressive politician which APC represents, he would have been in the APC which everybody sees as the platform that would address the yearning and aspirations of Nigerians including the people of Kwara state.
“But for him to have claimed that his exit in the party was because he was not given the leadership of the party speaks volume and this clearly shows that he is more interested in his own aggrandizement rather than the interest of the people and this he has confirmed in his speech delivered where he formally declared for PDP.
“But we want to congratulate the people of Kwara that the last of him has formally exited the platform that would take us to the next level. Everybody has seen that the only political party that is with the people is the APC”.