'PDP Members Defecting To APC Will Return With Empty Stomachs' - President Jonathan

President Goodluck Jonathan has said all those PDP members who have defected to APC will come back with empty stomachs. Speaking at the handover of reports by the Presidential Campaign Organisation, he said..

“These people who are running – some of them are already carpet-crossing, they will come back with empty stomachs because they (APC) would touch the primary members of their party before they would look at you, the peripheral. They know you are coming because you think there is food. Before it will get to you, the food will be gone. So let us be committed to PDP”

On the elections:

“If you look at the result, the difference is two point something million votes. If you look at areas where it appears that the PDP scored so low, PDP cannot get that kind of result.But the elections are over, the country remains. It is not as if Jonathan alone made the sacrifice; it is all of us. I just made the pronouncement. Some people here paid more sacrifice than I did.”

As the president continued his words of consolation to party members, national coordinator and chief financier of the Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN), Chief Ifeanyi Uba, and former minister of finance, Senator Nenadi Usman, were betrayed by their emotions and broke down in tears.

Uba wept profusely and uncontrollably to the extent that he had to be taken outside before the event ended. He was thought to have invested huge personal resources and time in the re-election bid of the president.

Consoling party members, Jonathan said;

“I know how some of you are already being persecuted. I know how much was involved. The key thing is that as a party we must continue to unite and work hard so that, as we go into the subsequent elections in 2019, PDP would be able to come up stronger. Even in the interest of the nation, we need PDP. 

“Though we have lost the presidential, National Assembly and governorship elections massively in the northern part of the country, PDP is still the dominant party. Let us not judge PDP by the result of the presidential election. Our duty is to go back and identify those areas. PDP is still the most organised party that nobody owns. 

“I encourage members of our party to remain and not be disillusioned just because we lost the presidential election and decide to go to where things will feed their stomachs or something. It is not easy; I have been here for over five years and you can hardly satisfy 50 per cent of those who worked for you.”