I joined APC because Buhari has integrity, his Party capable of sweeping away poverty, impunity — Akpabio

*Formally bids PDP bye amidst huge crowd, pumps

*Dismisses PDP as a party without vision

*Says nobody put gun on his head to join APC

*Says “I have no corruption charges against me before EFCC”

Former Senate Minority Leader, Chief Godswill Akpabio, has given formerly decamped from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) with a core message on why he moved.

He said he left the PDP because President Muhammadu Buhari is a man of integrity, a nationalist and because he needed to be with a party which is capacity for sweeping away poverty and impunity from Nigeria.

Akpabio, whose ceremonial defection came by a mega rally held at the Ikot Ekpene Township Stadium on Wednesday, pledged to take the people of Akwa Ibom State and the South South to the centre for meaningful visibility.

The 55-year-old former Governor of Akwa Ibom State told the huge crowd that he decided to join APC because he discovered that President Muhammadu Buhari “is a man of integrity and a nationalist’’.

Senator Akpabio said that he joined APC to help salvage the country.

“The country is at war and all the hands must be on deck to salvage the situation and not to aggravate it.

“As keepers of national emergency, everyone should put heads together. I decided to join to emancipate the people and provide succour for the people.’’

He said that the PDP of today has no vision and  the leadership is replete with arrogance.

The former governor said for those who said the APC government put a gun on his head to defect from PDP were merely telling lies as, according to him, he joined the ruling party on his own because he was tired of continuing with PDP.

Akpabio added that there was never any corruption charges against him before EFCC to warrant what some of the rumour mongers carried around as the negotiating basis for his decamping to APC.

With this, all the hullabaloo about Akpabiotic corruption may have rested.

Earlier, the Managing Director, Niger Delta Development Commission (NNDC), Mr. Nsima Ekere, said that change had come to Akwa Ibom and SouthSouth.

He said that Akwa Ibom has joined the progressive states because the people were dissatisfied with the long misrule of the PDP.

He said that Akpabio built the people and provided them with infrastructure but the present PDP government was a failure.

Ekere said that the people have agreed to re-elect President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019.