A former governor of old Bendel State, Dr Samuel Ogbemudia, has declared that President Goodluck Jonathan was held hostage in the course of his six year in office by a cabal of sycophants in the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.

The elder statesman, who made his views known on Wednesday in Benin, the Edo State capital, further noted that for the PDP to return to power, it has to work twice as hard as the ‘determined’ All Progressives Congress, APC.

According to him, “PDP is made up of responsible people in the country, but these responsible people are people who do not welcome any type of challenge, argument or interference. So, once they took their decision, they didn’t want anyone else to know what led to that decision and nobody should challenge them. Because of that, they held the president hostage all these years.

“Some of his advisers, before they met with Jonathan for certain issues, first met to decide what they were going to tell him, who would speak, who would oppose, while the rest would support it and majority would carry the vote. They would plan it that way before meeting the President. So, Jonathan would have no option than to go ahead and they succeeded in a number of cases and that led to what we have today.

“When the PDP won the first election, it was overwhelming. As a result, they mismanaged their victory and having mismanaged the victory the outcome is defeat. So if they want to win elections in future against a determined party like the APC, they must work twice as hard like they have done in the past. PDP did not put its home in order. Most APC members today were formerly in PDP,” Ogbemudia stated.