Carpet-crossing, decampment, defection or whatever name it is couched has been part of our body politic for such a long time that its end is hardly conceivable. In plain language, it connotes the repudiation of a political platform one had earlier espoused and embraced and, in some cases, through which one had been elected into a particular public office, and the joining of another one.
Notwithstanding this seemingly negative attribute, defection may not necessarily be a bad thing. It may even be done for good. A defector, for instance, may have suddenly realised he had all along belonged in the wrong group or realised the association he once promoted or identified with may have dumped those fine ideals it once professed.
What is appalling about abdicating one party for another is the way and manner the action is often undertaken in our clime, bereft of any altruistic underpinning. The comportment of some defectors and the end defection is designed to serve are even more dismaying.
A few analysts have attempted a comparison of some defections recently witnessed in the country when some 14 or so Senators left the governing APC for mostly opposition PDP and a flurry other defections followed. After the14 Senators announced on the floor of the Senate they were moving out of APC, Senate President Bukola Saraki, known to be APC only in name since he fraudulently ascended the Senate leadership position, expectedly joined them. In the days that followed, however, Senate Minority Leader, Senator Godswill Akpabio, who is former governor of Akwa Ibom State, also sensationally defected from PDP into APC.
They're doing them selves
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