Nigerian Senate Leader, Ali Ndume, has described the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, as a party in coma and which has no doctor or pharmacist except Olisa Metuh who serves ias its as a nurse.
Until April this year, the PDP was the ruling party in the country since Nigeria’s return to democratic governance in 1999 and Metuh is its current National Publicity Secretary.
Ndume, a senator on the platform of the All Progressives Congress, APC, said because the PDP was dying, it would be difficult for senators elected on the platform of the APC to defect to the opposition party.
“PDP is in a coma and only God knows when it will recover. As you can see now, they do not have any doctor or pharmacist and the only nurse is Olisa Metuh,” he said in an interview Sunday by Leadership newspaper, adding that he is currently speaking with some PDP senators to defect to the ruling party.
“I am part of some of the APC members trying to convince some of them to move over to our side and they will soon move in their numbers in the Senate…And you know that electoral shock is worse than electric shock,” he said.'
Concerning the recent shooting down of the motion by the PDP senators seeking the implementation of the APC-promised N5,000 stipend for vulnerable Nigerians which is now trending, Ndume said the motion was intended by the PDP to embarrass the APC and its government.
According to Ndume, it was more of a political ambush.
He said: “I was of the opinion that if they were serious and patriotic about it, and that is why I wanted to amend the motion, that the Senate would have asked the President to bring a supplementary budget to cover such expense.
“That would have been a better prayer to ask Mr. President to bring to the National Assembly, a supplementary budget that will be approved to enable him to start implementing the payment of N5000 to indigent people.
“The President cannot just pay such monies, where will he get it from without appropriation?
“So, the National Assembly cannot be part of that unless the resources were appropriated for…PDP wanted to use that for a cheap blackmail but that did not work, Nigerians are more educated than that.
“But the President is still serious about it and we are looking for all avenues to be able to raise resources to be able to execute the project which is laudable.
“I am sure that by 2016 when the budget is brought, room will be made for it. Also, you have to build a data base because if you start paying, who will you pay to?
“The first thing now is for the government to be able to have the statistics of all those concerned, the indigent, the unemployed, the elderly and then you know where they are including their data before you start payment.”
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