The ranks of the Peoples Democratic Party in Ondo State was on Saturday further depleted with the defection of over 3,400 members of the party to the All Progressives Congress.
The defectors are loyalists of the former candidate of the PDP in the 2012 governorship election in the state, Chief Olusola Oke.
Oke had earlier this year defected to the APC.
At the event to mark the defection held in Igbokoda, headquarters of Ilaje Local Government Area of the state, the defectors said they took the decision to leave the PDP because of the mismanagement of the country by the party in the last 16 years of its reign.
Addressing the defectors, Oke, who was a former National Legal Adviser of the PDP, said the time had come for all Ilaje sons and daughters to dump the party, which he said, had brought untold hardship to the people in the country.
He added, “I am ashamed of being a member of a party that has plunged the country into calamity. With the revelation coming out now, I have to apology to my teeming supporters and Nigerians that my former party brought Nigeria to her knees”.
He further declared that the change that had taken root at the federal level would soon berth in the state in the 2016 governorship election and the local government poll later in the year.
He said, “The change that had taken over Nigeria will come to Ondo State. This is the time for change in Ondo State. It is not good for this state to be in opposition to the Federal Government and hence this state must be in tandem with the government at the centre. We want to take over the government both at the state and local government levels”.
A former leader of the PDP in the riverside areas of Ilaje, Mr. Glory Okuntade, while speaking on behalf of other defectors, explained that they were leaving the party for the APC because they had nothing to show their teeming supporters in the area in terms of development that their membership of PDP had brought to them.
