Three northern governors elected on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) are on their way to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) any moment from now, TheCable understands.
As many as 30 senators and 70 members of the house of representatives are expected to follow suit before the national assembly goes on recess in the next two weeks.
The potential defectors are members of the “reformed” faction of APC that recently emerged.
Most of them were in the PDP before defecting to APC under the aegis of “new PDP” in 2013.
Aminu Tambuwal, governor of Sokoto state, Abdulfatah Ahmed (Kwara), and Samuel Ortom (Benue) are in the “first batch” of big guns expected to defect, an insider has told TheCable.
“The plan also is that some APC governors will not defect but will remain behind to inflict maximum damage on the party from within,” a southern governor informed TheCable on Monday.
Tambuwal is rumoured to harbour a presidential ambition while Ahmed, who is coming to the end of his second term in Kwara, is expected to run for the senate.
“Ortom, on his own part, has been guaranteed safe return to the PDP by Senator David Mark. He is considered the best bet in the circumstance as the incumbent governor, and he can leave the party to George Akume,” another inside, who attended some of the strategy sessions, told TheCable.
Senate President Bukola Saraki is also expected to return to the PDP and is reported to be nursing a presidential ambition — bolstered by the recent supreme court judgment which freed him of criminal charges over allegations of false asset declaration.
Following the series of crisis that hit the ruling party at the state congresses in June, some of the APC governors and lawmakers who lost out have been guaranteed automatic tickets by the PDP to entice them to the party.
APC currently controls 24 states while PDP has 11 and All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) one.
If the three governors defect as planned, PDP will increase to 14 while APC will reduce to 21.