The Chairman of the Presidential Initiative on Compressed Natural Gas (Pi-CNG), Ismaeel Ahmed, has dismissed claims that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is actively encouraging defections from opposition parties.
Ahmed made the remarks while speaking on Politics Today, a programme on Channels Television, where he addressed the recent wave of defections by politicians from opposition parties into the APC.
According to him, the ruling party is not deliberately seeking to weaken the opposition by persuading politicians to cross over.
“We don’t go out of our way looking for people to come just because they want to defect or because we want to weaken the opposition,” Ahmed said during the interview.
He argued that the increasing number of defections is largely due to what he described as the weakness of opposition parties rather than any form of coercion by the government of Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
“I personally believe that the opposition is just unbelievably weak,” he added.
His comments come amid growing debates over the steady movement of politicians from various opposition parties into the APC, a trend that has sparked concerns among critics about the strength of Nigeria’s multi-party democracy.
Some political figures have alleged that members of opposition parties are being pressured to join the ruling party, an accusation the APC and its allies have repeatedly denied.
Ahmed’s remarks have further fueled discussions about th