Four members of the ruling All Progressives Congress in the House of Representatives defected on Tuesday on the floor in Abuja.
The development brought the total number of lawmakers who abandoned the party in the last three weeks to five.
Those who defected on Tuesday were Mr Abiodun Awoleye-Dada (Oyo State), who moved to the Accord party; Mr Samuel Segun-Williams (Ogun State), who defected to Labour Party; and Mr Lawan Hassan-Anka (Zamfara State), who joined the Peoples Democratic Party.
The fourth member, Mr Adedapo Adesina (Oyo State), defected to the African Democratic Congress.
In their defection letters read to members by the Speaker, Mr Yakubu Dogara, the lawmakers cited the crises in the APC as the main reason for leaving.
The latest defections further cut the numerical strength of the APC to about 182, while the PDP rose to 158.
The ADC has seven members; APGA, five; Accord, two; ZLP, two; SDP, 1; and APP 1. There are two vacant seats, bringing the total number of seats to 360.
The PUNCH had reported exclusively on Tuesday last week that up to 36 more APC lawmakers could leave the party before November 17 in protest over their inability to secure return tickets for 2019.
Recall that up to 70 members had gone to the appeal panel to protest their failure to secure return tickets.
Incidentally, the panel was said to have resolved only eight of the cases in favour of the petitioners, leaving the majority of 62 out of the equation.
One of the affected members from Kaduna State, Mr Musa Soba, was the first to defect three weeks ago.
He had hinted that the aggrieved members, after series of meetings agreed to defect in batches.
Soba stated, “About 36 more members will follow me soon. Others will also exit before the 17th of November.”
Findings showed the defection plans were on in spite of efforts by President Muhammadu Buhari to resolve the disputes in the party.
As of Saturday, it was learnt that a few of the members were ready to re-consider their decision to defect if they could get promises of appointments from the APC.
One of them, Mr Kehinde Odeneye, said, “We need to manage the crisis well. What we see is that if members can be pacified with appointments, it will help.
“It is possible that the APC will win in 2019. If that happens, there are opportunities like appointments and other things.
“Even if there will be defection, it will not be on a massive scale.”