12th January, 2024
By Taiwo Okanlawon
Nollywood actor cum politician Kenneth Okonkwo has said that he did not defect from the All Progressive Congress (APC) but resigned from the party.
Okonkwo had dumped the APC in 2022, citing the party’s adoption of a Muslim-Muslim ticket for the 2023 presidential election.
According to him, his resignation came from an “interest of equity, justice, fairness and peaceful co-existence among Nigerians”.
A month later, the actor joined the Labour Party (LP) and promised to help in actualising Peter Obi’s presidential bid.
In a recent interview with Channels, the 55-year-old politician refuted claims that he defected from the ruling party.
The movie star said he is not very “comfortable with the word defection” because he resigned from the party.
“First of all, I am usually not comfortable with the word defection. I resigned from APC and I joined another party. You defect when you move from one party to another,” he said.
“Let us say you are a member of the National Assembly and in Nigeria, you must be a member of a political party to hold any office. So there would not be any chance for you to resign, in that circumstance, you can defect. But when you resign and join another party, that is not defection.”