Kenneth Okonkwo, who served as the spokesperson for the Labour Party's 2023 presidential campaign, has strongly criticized the wave of political defections to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), branding the defectors as “professional criminals” motivated by personal interest rather than any genuine ideological commitment.
Speaking in a candid interview on ARISE News on Monday, Okonkwo was reacting to a recent political rally in Delta State organized by the APC, which saw several prominent politicians announce their defection to the party.
He employed a striking metaphor to describe the fluidity and inconsistency of such politicians, saying: “That palm wine, if you don’t refrigerate it, can change taste more than 20 times in a day… These are politicians that are unstable like water. Palmwine politicians are individuals who constantly shift allegiances and ideologies for personal gain.”
Okonkwo didn’t stop at criticizing their instability; he also cast doubt on the integrity of many of the defectors, accusing several of being embroiled in corruption. According to him, some individuals who mounted the stage during the defection rally had been previously convicted or accused of corruption-related offenses.
“On that podium, you saw men convicted by the Supreme Court for bribery and corruption in dollars in the name of integrity. Their surnames are now classified as dollar,” he remarked sharply, taking a dig at the credibility of the political actors involved.
The actor-turned-politician condemned the entire event, characterizing it as a “gathering of questionable characters” and describing the assembly as “a subset of professional criminals made up of suspects, accused, and convicts,” indicating his dismay over the normalization of such political behavior in the countr
y.