Nigerians no longer want APC, PDP – Doyin Okupe

The National Leader of the Accord Party, Dr. Doyin Okupe, has predicted that the end has come for both the ruling All Progressives Congress and the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party, in the country.
The former media aide to former President Olusegun Obasanjo said that he defected from the PDP to AP, when he realised that the major opposition party and the ruling APC had failed Nigerians.
Okupe, who spoke with our correspondent at the state congress of the Accord Party in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, where Mr. Isaac Amusa emerged the state chairman of the party, said that he did not have any quarrel with the leadership of the PDP before he decided to dump the party.
He said the failure of the two political parties to meet the yearnings and aspirations of Nigerians informed his decision to move to the AP.
The AP leader also explained that the recent election in Anambra State that brought in Governor Willie Obiano for a second term was an indication that Nigerians were no longer interested in PDP or APC, but the personality of the individual politician.
He said, “I didn’t ask for anything. I didn’t quarrel with anybody, I didn’t fight with anybody, I didn’t ask for anything and nobody offered me anything. I am just saying that the end of the road has come, not just for PDP but also for the APC. I keep saying it because these two parties no longer have the capacity of the make-up, which they can give people in Nigeria unless the Nigerian citizens want to fool themselves.
“What happened in Anambra is a watershed. Here was the candidate that was backed by the government and money. The PDP candidate was backed by the political juggernauts in Anambra State, because Anambra is 100 per cent PDP, yet Obiano won the election, not just because he performed, but because people wanted to punish the existing parties and it will happen in every state, including Ogun.”
Okupe, who said that the older ones in the party had less political ambition, noted that the AP was a platform dedicated to the younger ones to contest various political offices in the next elections.
He, therefore, expressed confidence that AP would produce the next governor of the state, saying that it remained the party to beat in the state come 2019.
“We want to hold a ladder at the platform so that young people can climb. Most of us really have very little or no more political ambition but we are dissatisfied with the way we have practised politics and with the way political parties are manifesting. It is not something of repute; it’s not something that we can be proud of, even for those of us that have
been in for a very long time,” the AP national leader added.