The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has collapsed in Ebonyi State, following the mass defection to the All Progressives Congress (APC), Commissioner for Information and State Orientation Uchenna Orji has said.
He took exception to what he described as attacks on Governor Dave Umahi by the PDP chairman, Chief Fred Udeogu.
Orji, a lawyer, said the PDP chieftain presided over a visionless and empty meeting at a ‘drinking place,” where he made unfounded allegations and heaped blames on the governor.
He said Umahi, who had left the PDPfor the All Progressives Congress (APC) cannot be responsible for the woes of the party.
Orji said:” It is understandable that the mass movement of Ebonyi people to APC has caused a colossal collapse of the PDP from its very fabric, but the remnants of that party should be brave enough to face the bitter reality of the fragile condition of PDP in the state.
“We are therefore, surprised that the first meeting of PDP in the state, after the defection to All Progressives Congress, which should have been agenda setting after being irreparably flattened by the mass exodus of the good people of Ebonyi State, was only held to play a blame game against the APC government.”
Orji said the issues raised by Udeogu at the press conference were “impotently, baseless, and objectively diversionary.”
He advised the PDP to leave the government and people of Ebonyi State out of the party’s woes, including the leadership tussle. He maintained that the governor has no business with “a troubled party.”
Orji said: “The plea that the governor should facilitate the takeover of the Africa’s biggest Party Secretariat by the state chapter of PDP and the allegation that the governor unleashed violence and politically motivated killings in the state after our massive defection to APC can best be described as the most unintelligent shenanigans by the most frustrated opposition party in the history of the state.
” If the present crop of leaders of PDP in the state had accused Ebonyi State government of punishing them with unprecedented transformational projects or exposing their inefficiency and failure to attract development to Ebonyi State, which they did at the pleasure of their personal aggrandizement, it would have been understandable.
The people of Ebonyi State cannot be deceived because we have the history and record of the involvement of each of the present leaders of PDP in the monumental violence and communal clashes that engulfed Ebonyi State between 2001 and 2003.
“We are aware of the various but halted plots of the PDP to import weaponry and machinery to unleash terror on parts of the state for the ill-motives of Mr. Fred Udeogu and his group of PDP members.
“We are not unaware that this new marriage of the formerly estranged political titans is not without violent motives, but they should be assured that our security surveillance has been networked in every part of the state to dismantle such orchestrations and forestall a re-occurrence of a show down of angry Abuja group in the state.
He added:”We call on our dear Ebonyians to disregard and discountenance the press release of the Udeogu group of PDP as an idle and directionless cover up lamentation to curry the sympathy of the gullible and attract the attention of our focused Divine Mandate Administration to their self inflicted woes.
” Ebonyi state is safer, stronger, better and happier in the hands of a performer per excellence, Chief David Nweze Umahi, even as we move into the next level of development under the All Progressives Congress (APC).”
