Ebonyi as new battleground for APC, PDP

Ebonyi State has hardly known peace from the time Governor Dave Umahi dumped the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the rival All Progressives Congress (APC) in November last year till now. Former family members and friends in the then ruling party have now become bitter foes shaking the political landscape of the state to its very foundation. There is a bitter struggle between the governor›s remnants of his loyalists in the state PDP on the one hand and on the other hand, that national leadership of the party has placed its affairs in their custody in the wake of the exit of the governor.
The Ebonyi PDP accused the governor of doing everything to unsettle the party because his expectations of the PDP concerning his defection to the APC have not quite materialized. Members of the now opposition party in the state feel that Umahi’s game plan is to ruin the PDP so that it cannot provide any meaningful opposition to his ambitions in his new party. But as much as he had tried, the PDP believes that it is getting more mileage in Ebonyi State.
Umahi’s apparent reason for leaving the PDP was that the party had not indicated that it is willing to zone its 2023 presidency ticket to the South-East. Therefore, he considered his exit from the PDP to be in the interest of the region. But before then, the governor had apparently fallen out with key PDP members in the state, some of whom were responsible for him rising to the governorship post of the state. Politicians like former Ebonyi State governor, Senator Sam Egwu and former Senate President, Ayim Pius Ayim, had an increasingly strained relationship with their former mentee and that brought visible cracks to the PDP before Umahi’s defection.
Observers say the real reason the governor left the PDP was to be rid of the shackles some of its politicians had placed on him. But he also thought that he could pull the majority of the stakeholders in the PDP along with him to his new abode and render his opponents remaining in the PDP politically irrelevant. Cynics say that on this score, the governor appeared to have miscalculated because no Ebonyi State PDP politician of note had joined him in the APC. This means that the PDP remains a strong enough opposition to make him uncomfortable in the state contrary to his expectations.
The chairman of the Ebonyi State PDP caretaker committee, Elder Fred Udeogu believes that this is the reason Umahi has sought to place hurdles before the state leadership of the party, which, since inauguration, has not been able to gain access into the state secretariat of the party in Abakaliki.  Pro-Umahi elements that the PDP believes the governor deliberately left behind in the party had dragged it to court claiming to be the authentic leadership of the party. It was only last week that a Federal High Court in Abuja issued an order restraining the Umahi faction from parading themselves as the leaders of the party in Ebonyi State. Beyond that, the PDP has been crying of persecution and violent attacks on its members by agents of the state and vowing to fight back with all its might.
Udeogu affirmed that Umahi’s frustration over his inability to get PDP members to defect with him to the APC was responsible for his actions against the party, telling a press conference in Abuja that Umahi was fighting the PDP in the state because he did not realize his main objective to pull them to his new party. The party boss stated that despite being tempted with political appointments and other enticing offers, some of the PDP elders have resolutely told the governor that they had been in the party longer than him and could not join him in his new party. He also alleged that Umahi, wanted to have control of both the APC and the PDP at the same time but the PDP members have resisted his moves, thus infuriating him. This is why, according to Udeogu, Umahi had allegedly sponsored several litigation against the Ebonyi PDP as part of the effort to destabilise the party.
The Ebonyi PDP boss posited: “Ever since Governor Dave Umahi’s solo defection from the PDP to the APC, our great party has been inundated with a slew of state sponsored court actions all aimed at derailing the caretaker committee set up by the NEC of our great party. As we all know, Governor Dave Umahi’s illusion had been that Ebonyi people would defect with him to the APC. He had boasted that PDP stakeholders and members of the National Assembly would defect with him. When this failed, the reaction from Governor Umahi has been to derail and destroy the caretaker committee by filing a suit at the State High Court, asking the court not to recognise this caretaker committee.”  Udeogu is now confident that the state leadership will take possession of the state PDP secretariat armed with the court order.
However. the Ebonyi State PDP members are still on the edge, unsure of what the administration might do. Hence, Udeogu has called on the security agencies to protect the party members from the threat of the Umahi administration. The governor enied that he was after the PDP or its members as alleged as, according to him, having left the PDP, he has since moved on and not interested in what goes on in the party.
Yet, observers say that Ebonyi being a core PDP state in the southeast, will not be an easy game for Governor Umahi who must prove his credentials to be a credible presidential candidate to the APC hierarchy by exercising complete control of his state’s political affairs. But his attempt to gain control and PDP’s resistance to it has placed the state on a slippery turf in the run up to 2023.

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