I am not in PDP for personal gains–says Shekarau:

I am not in PDP for personal gains–says Shekarau:

Malam Ibrahim Shekarau Former governor of Kano State Malam Ibrahim Shekarau has said that his defection from the All Progressives Congress (APC) to the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) was not informed by selfish motive.

Speaking during his screening at the Senate yesterday, Shekarau told the lawmakers that he was compelled by the circumstances and the political development in his environment to move to the PDP.

Shekarau who was responding to question from Senator Ibrahim Gumba (PDP, Bauchi) on the incessant movement of politicians from one party to another without any ideological base maintained that it was unfair to compare Nigeria with other advanced democracies in terms of political party ideologies as such countries, according to him, did worse than Nigeria before their advancement.

He argued that: “these movements [defection] I don’t totally agree that all the time they are for personal interests.

They are dictated by circumstances of the political development around the environment you are in. I am sure with time, ideologies will be institutionalised.”

“On the issue of changing political parties, if you read the history of the Americans too, they did worse than what we are doing at the stage we are.

Ideologies are not imposed it’s an ongoing process, the education of the political class,” he said.

He said education is the progressive discovery of ignorance, stressing that “gradually, we are learning, we are trying to develop. Ideologies will become institutionalized by themselves.”

Shekarau was governor of Kano State from 2003 to 2011 on the platform of the defunct All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP) and was a leading figure in the formation of the APC last year but left for the PDP as a result of leadership tussle with Governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso in the state.