Party will recover mandate from defected Senator Nelson Effiong - Ex-minister says

Chief Nduese Essien, the former Minster of Lands, Housing and Urban Development, says the Peoples Democracy Party (PDP) will recover its mandate from the defected PDP senator, Nelson Effiong.

Essien made this known during an enlarged stakeholders’ meeting of Eket Senatorial District on Saturday to deliberate on the recent political development in the district.

He said the PDP Akwa Ibom would begin the process that will ultimately ensure that the mandate given to Effiong was recovered.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that Effiong, the Senator representing Eket Senatorial District, recently announced his defection from PDP, to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) on the floor of the senate.

The former minister, who is the political leader of Eket Senatorial District frowned at the alleged level of indiscipline exhibited by the senator, saying that the party would take drastic action to recover its mandate.

“We will take steps to recover our mandate from Sen. Effiong, who defected to APC.

“We are not talking about recall, because recall is an electioneering process, but there are other ways of recovering our mandate.

“When I heard that Sen. Effiong has defected, I was happy because this is the man that we were told was ill for so many months and he was not appearing in the floor of the senate.

“We were not hearing from him, we were not seeing him in the constituency and he was not doing anything.

“He was merely wasting our senatorial seat, now that he has gone, I think we have the opportunity to replace our mandate with another son of the area,” Essien said.

He noted that Sen. Effiong defection was strange because he emerged from a predominantly one party in the state and that the party was not in crisis in his senatorial district.

“There is disagreement in the leadership of the PDP at the national level, but back home at his constituency and at the state level, the party is intact,” he said.

He expressed dismay with what he described as Senator Effiong’s abysmal performance in the upper chamber of the National Assembly.

Essien insisted that for the senator to have defected without consulting the people who elected him in the first instance was “uncharitable and unacceptable”.

Meanwhile, in a swift reaction to the threat by the people of Eket Senatorial District, Sen. Effiong whose defection jolted the PDP, said that he widely consulted people of his Senatorial District before defecting to the APC.

Effiong said that he defected to APC from PDP because of factions and crisis in the party.

“PDP is factionalised, that is the major reason why I left the party; and then you can not be in a party that has no direction, people are leaving the party because of the inability to solve its crisis.

“As a politician I cannot leave my future for such a party, PDP is a party that has declared war on itself and I cannot withstand that,” Effiong said.