The news of former Senate President, Ken Nnamani’s registration as a member of the ruling party, APC may come to many as a surprise. He made the defection official in Amechi-Uwani, Enugu south local government area, Enugu on Sunday and according to the various news sites who claim to have contacted him, Senator Nnamani has given all interrelated responses. To Sahara Reporters, he said: “If you want to get groceries from the market, you do not send the person who has already left the market, but the one going to the market…“. To Premium Times, Nnamani said: “All politics is local…I have to do what my constituents demanded by joining the APC at ward level“.
Ken Nnamani joined the PDP in 1999 barely a year after the party was formed and became Senate President in 2005. In November 2015, months after the party lost the presidential election, Mr Nnamani had been uncomfortable with the state that the party was in, he cited these internal issues as the reasons for the loss in the elections but advised against blame game by members and suggested ways of fixing them.
At the time, Mr Nnamani attributed the party’s problems to “the abandonment of core values and rules“. He condemned the practice of godfatherism as the bane of progress in the PDP as the party had completely resorted to what he described as a “discretion-based system”. He suggested that internal democracy should be practised, “I suggest that before we go further on this journey let all those who desire to lead PDP in formal or informal positions of authority publicly declare a new code of conduct…the new PDP must put in its constitution expulsion for any party official at all levels who deliberately subverts the process of internal democracy.”
It took only three months before Mr Nnamani called off his allegiance to the party by quitting in an official statement he titled: “PDP, the Burden and My Conscience”. Not only did he quit the PDP, he announced in the letter that he was going non-partisan. Mr Nnamani restated that the party still did not take advice of people like him who foresaw the fall and prescribed ways of averting it.
“With more than half a decade of championing such a fundamental but simple idea, I regret that the PDP leadership continues to rebuff internal democracy. The party allowed itself to be blinded by hubris to believe that it will remain in power and influence for 60 years in spite of several gross missteps and grievous misnomer.”
“I do not believe I should continue to be a member of the PDP as it is defined today. This is certainly not the party I joined years ago to help change my country. I do not also believe that the PDP as it is managed today will provide an opportunity for me to continue to play the politics of principles and values which I set for myself as a young man.”
Ken Nnamani stayed off politics, as he said he would, for almost a year up until his registration with the APC. In between though, President Muhammadu Buhari appointed him as the Chairman of the Electoral Reforms Committee. In recent months, the APC has welcomed tens of politicians from the PDP and Ken Nnamani is one of the biggest names. This recent trend of events has made the APC a bigger threat for the opposition in 2019. But the question is, will Ken Nnamani run for office in the coming elections?
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