Since the announcement of the merger between breakaway faction also code named New Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and the All Progressives Congress, APC, mixed reactions have continued to trail merger. While some described it as a welcome development others criticized the new arrangement.

In the views of the former state chairman of the PDP in Kwara State, “the PDP as a party in Kwara is dead.”
Balogun Fulani made this declaration while announcing the movement of the party members to APC yesterday in Ilorin, warning those who might still be parading themselves as PDP members in the state to steer clear of the party’s secretariat located at Nupe Road, GRA, Ilorin.

Balogun, a Fulani tribe said that the secretariat is not PDP’s property, disclosing that the rent for the office has always being paid by the party’s leader in the state, Senator Bukola Saraki.

He clarified that the receipts for the office rent were written in his name (Ishola Balogun- Fulani) and not in PDP’s.
He said party politics is not sacrosanct in Kwara State “because we are Sarakites and we always move en masse to wherever our leader, Senator Bukola Saraki directs us to go.”

He added; “Our leaders have spoken the mind of everybody in Kwara State, especially those of us in PDP. “

Meanwhile a former chairman of Ilorin South Local Government Council, Alhaji Ismail Agboola, a stalwart of APC has said that his party in the state has heard the news but is yet to be briefed by the top echelon of the party. He said that in politics, there is no permanent friendship, only permanent interests. He said that as long as Saraki is prepared to tow the lines of APC as a gentleman who wants a safe landing from being harassed by his former party mates, he would be welcomed warmly.

Agboola added that it is a known fact that PDP has been losing sympathy from the people since a long time ago and that ever before the party crisis, the trends in the party has been on the downward slope, adding that if the crisis lasted longer than this PDP would have naturally fizzled out of Kwara.

He stressed that the merger would portend different things to different people based on prevailing circumstances in their state. He said in Kwara, people play politics of their role model and not of party politics. He said Kwarans are APC loyalists as depicted in the last local government elections, which was upturned against popular wish.