The former Akwa Ibom State governor dumped the People's Democratic Party (PDP) for the ruling All Progressives' Congress (APC) and announced his defection to hundreds of supporters at a rally held in his honour in Ikot-Ekpene on August 8, 2018. His defection came in the wake of significant political defections in the other direction as three state governors and dozens of lawmakers, including Senate President, Bukola Saraki, dumped the APC for the PDP.

While speaking during an interview on Roadmap 2019, a political programme on Channels Television, Akpabio said he moved to the APC to ensure that the defections from the APC to the PDP did not crash the current government.

According to him, all the other politicians that dumped the APC for the PDP only did it for selfish interest, a situation he tried to correct by dumping the PDP for the APC to help the current government of President Muhammadu Buhari.

He said, "I won't say it was a spur-of-the-moment decision but I'll rather say that what actually happened was that I saw a situation where the country was likely to go into crisis as a result of what has been called sudden defections. I saw a systematic attempt to bring democracy to an end in the country.

"In the People's Democratic Party (PDP), we suffered a major setback when in 2014, or thereabout, we had some governors with some chieftains who walked out on us at Eagle Square during the national convention and thereafter, they teamed up with a couple of others and the APC was formed.

"We thought it was a joke but it turned out at the end of the day after the 2015 election, we suffered major defeat, and I think that was the first time in the history of Nigeria that an incumbent Federal Government would be defeated by the opposition. It was also a fantastic beauty for democracy. It was a good sign for Africa."

Akpabio further argued that the government of the day needs to be supported by everyone so that it is not distracted by other things that don't contribute to the nation's growth.

"If we vote a government into power and we don't support that government to succeed, then we're not going to bequeath a better nation to future generation of Nigerians. Continuous distraction of governments in the past has resulted in a lot of dislocation of policies and stunted growth," he said.

He continued by arguing that the defections of others to the opposition party was an attempt to bring down the government and urged for unity to better the country's fortunes.

He said, "I don't think the movements that we saw from APC to PDP were prompted by national interest. I think most of those things were based on personal interests of individuals. Some thought that they may not be able to win elections, some thought they had offended the principalities in their party, and so they decided to move.

"For me, I saw a situation where the ruling party was not only being distracted but the movements were capable of bringing down the government. We need to have Nigeria before we can have election. A country can crash under three months.

"I just assessed the situation and I said that I needed to contribute my quota towards stabilising the situation, towards ensuring that people realise that it wasn't all about conspiracy to bring down a government."

The senator also said that some of the insecurity issues in the country are attempts to destabilise the government.