The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has admitted that internal leadership failures, rather than external political pressure, were responsible for the defection of former Osun governorship aspirant, Ademola Adeleke, to the Accord Party.

Speaking on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief on Thursday, the PDP National Publicity Secretary, Ini Ememobong, said the party failed to address the issues that ultimately drove Adeleke away.

“Adeleke is a victim of circumstance, and those circumstances were created by human failings within the party. Every problem has a human cause and therefore should also have a human solution, but decisive action was not taken early enough. If leadership had acted firmly from 2023 when the decline began, the outcome might have been different,” he said.

Ememobong added that misplaced optimism exacerbated tensions surrounding Adeleke’s situation.

“Sometimes leaders believe that once passions cool, people will reconsider their positions. But that didn’t happen here, and by the time the convention took decisive action in Ibadan, things had already gone too far. That is how he became a victim of vicarious liabilities that he could not completely detach himself from,” he said.

Addressing comparisons between Adeleke’s situation and that of Rivers State Governor, Siminalayi Fubara, Ememobong insisted the two cases were unrelated.

“We are not making excuses for anyone. Both situations are circumstantial, and even the victims had roles they played in the conflicts that engulfed them. But in the case of Fubara, he voluntarily became the party’s candidate, and those who supported him have repeatedly spoken about the agreements made. Till today he hasn’t told anyone what the agreement was,” the party spokesman said.

He added that the party became concerned when Fubara publicly declared that he no longer felt safe within the PDP.

“We sympathise deeply with Governor Fubara, because he is a calm and gentle person pushed to the wall. But we frown at the attempt to shift blame after he personally told Nigerians it was a ‘father–son matter’. This is classic Stockholm syndrome, where the captive falls in love with the captor, and it leads to conscious amnesia about where the real blame should be placed,” he said.

Ememobong also blamed part of the delay in the Rivers’ legal battle on the Supreme Court.

“When fighting for a person, the person must feel you are fighting for him. But throughout that period, the governor discouraged people from fighting, insisting he would ‘resolve it’. You cannot cry more than the bereaved. No one can administer an injection to a patient who insists the injection will kill him,” he said.

He added that senior lawyers had complained that the Supreme Court simply refused to assign a hearing date.

Despite the recent crises, he rejected claims that the PDP had collapsed.

“A political party is the hotbed of conflict because it is a potpourri of heterogeneous struggles for power. To say the PDP has failed would mean there was an examination set and a score given, and that’s not the case. Even the ruling party faces its own internal battles despite having a President,” he said.

According to him, the party is engaging with its governors ahead of 2027 but has no intention of pleading with anyone to stay.

“We are not begging anyone, but we are reaching out. The Turaki-led administration is reaching out, and the Governors’ Forum is reaching out. Every executive has the legal capacity to make decisions, even if some of those decisions may be moral or immoral, but still legal,” he said. (Vanguard)

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