Written by Andrew Agbese, Jos Tuesday, 21 June 2011 00:00
Former governor of Plateau State, Ambassador Fidelis Tapgun, says he remains a member of the PDP in Plateau State despite his defection to other parties before the April general elections.
Tapgun had been the director general of the Jang/Tallen campaign organization in 2007 but moved to the Labour Party with other PDP stalwarts in the state shortly before the gubernatorial elections.
The former governor, however, explained to our correspondent that he has since returned to his party, the PDP, as he never registered with the Labour Party in the first place.
He said what he and a few others did was to protest the manner things had been carried out in the party which, he said, is not a new thing in party politics.
“What we were doing was to identify candidates, not party. We look for people that can deliver because that is the way it has turned out to be. you follow the party and the party emasculates due to certain interests you protect,” the former governor said.
Tapgun who was in the Chief Alex Ekwueme-led reconciliation committee said certain developments within the party in many states made it difficult for its founding members to contribute to it.
He said: “I told you we went round with Ekwueme that time and the reason was that people who founded the party became reluctant in contributing anything because of what they saw and this is not good for the party. This happened in various states where primaries are not even allowed. We got a lot of information from people who founded the PDP.
On whether the PDP in the state recognises him as a member, Tapgun said “they know ‘am here. everything that happened was a protest against what the party was doing. There is nobody in the state that has not done that.”
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Link:
I remain a PDP leader, says Tapgun