Nigeria heading to a state of hopelessness on rising food prices -PDP

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has denied knowledge of the reported defection of the Ebonyi State Governor, Dave Umahi, to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

The party also raised the alarm that Nigeria was heading towards a state of hopelessness with rising food prices, inflation and insecurity.

The PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, stated these while answering questions from journalists on Tuesday in Abuja.

According to him, the party has not received any resignation letter from Umahi, describing the report as mere speculation.

He said, “There is nobody that is moving to the ruling party because there is nobody that is moving from PDP to the APC to the best of our knowledge.

“He (Umahi) has not resigned from our party. Until he does so, we believe that all these are speculative.

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“However, you will recall that when we heard the rumour that the governor of Ebonyi State was going to defect, we went to visit him to discuss on issues bothering on cohesion in our party. As far as we are concerned, we are yet to receive any formal information that he has left.”

Ologbondiyan said Thursday’s National Executive Committee meeting of the PDP was convoked to discuss the state of the nation

He said, “To us in the PDP, and you must also agree that you know as a fact that NEC meeting is expected to hold once in every quarter and this quarter we have not held it. And our decision to hold the NEC meeting has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the rumour in the political space.

“For us, the PDP is a well structured political party with an experience of nothing less than 22 years, in the political firmament of our nation. We are not a party that will be responding to issues on impulse. We are not a party that will be pushed around by any individual.

“Our agenda us on the state of the nation which has become troublesome and worrying. Prices of staples have soared, inflation getting higher by the day, insecurity growing out of control of the government. What we are seeing ahead is a state of hopelessness.”