Stephen Ukandu, Umuahia
The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has given reasons why it suspended its three-man delegates election for Abia State, which was earlier scheduled for today (Saturday).
National Organising Secretary of the PDP, Hon. Umar Bature, cited the court order restraining the party from conducting the exercise as reason for the suspension.
Bature who spoke with our Correspondent on the telephone, however, said that the national leadership of the party took the action to enable it set up a panel to conduct the exercise on a later date.
The National Organising Secretary said that the vacation of the court would pave the way for a committee to organise the exercise to be inaugurated.
“It is obvious the exercise can’t hold today in Abia because people going there to conduct it will have to get time to travel.
“We have a court order in three states – Abia, Kano and Ebonyi States, but two have been vacated –Abia and Kano – remaining Ebonyi which was not an order per say but a valid court judgement.
“They know the procedure of how things are done. If we had set up a committee yesterday, they would have been there now but there was a court order. But now it has been vacated. We will set up a panel. But because of the holidays it can’t be today.”
The alleged power tussle among the various camps in the ruling party is beginning to manifest, as some stakeholders warn of possible implosion if no urgent steps were taken to resolve the impasse.
The alleged plot by the Ukwa-la-Ngwa bloc to hold power beyond 2023 against the provisions of the Abia charter of equity is at the centre of it all.
According to a source, the power play and battle over the party’s ticket among various aspirants who have flooded the national secretariat of the party with their respective lists, is the cause of the current turbulence in the ruling party.
Following the refusal of the various gladiators to shift grounds for a possible compromise, Abuja was said to be contemplating jettisoning the three-man delegates for Abia and resorting to only statutory delegates for the party’s primaries.
As at Friday night, there was intense speculation that the exercise had been cancelled.
But when contacted Saturday morning, the Abia State Publicity Secretary of PDP, Hon. Fabian Nwankwo, said the exercise would go on as earlier planned.
He said that the 17 Local Government Chairmen of the party had been directed to proceed to the party secretariat in Umuahia for collection of election materials in their respective Councils.
The former Commissioner said that he was told that a court order against the exercise had been vacated.
Speaking with our Correspondent later, the State Secretary of the party, Mr. David Iroh, admitted that there was uncertainty over the exercise as at Friday night but said that the State Chairman of the party, Rt. Hon. Asiforo Okere, had called Saturday morning to inform him that the exercise would hold.
According to him: “As at yesterday when I left the party office with my chairman, we were not sure the election was going to hold.
But early this morning, my chairman called me and said it was likely to hold. He told me he had got signals from Abuja that it would hold.”
Asked what gave rise to the uncertainty in the first place, the party’s Scribe said “so many things could have given rise to that because this is political season.
“We are having too many court cases,” he added.
A source had confided in our Correspondent that the leadership of the party as at Friday night was making frantic efforts to vacate a court order restraining the party from conducting the exercise.
The cold war brewing in Abia PDP between those in support of power shift to Abia-North, and those behind the alleged Ngwa self succession agenda, is becoming intense as the day goes by.
It was alleged that there was a plot to manipulate the outcome of the three-man delegate election in favour of a certain “anointed candidate.”
But those opposed to the move have vowed never to allow the masterminds have their way, thus their resolve to shift the battle ground to the courts.
They insist that delegates should not be hand-picked by anybody to enable them vote independently without any external influence or monetary inducements at the primaries.
Former Senate President Senator Adolphus Wabara had warned that PDP might lose Abia in 2023 if the party’s governorship ticket was given to another Ngwa man after the incumbent Governor Okezie Ikpeazu.
The immediate past Secretary to State Government SSG, Dr. Eme Okoro; as well as Ikpeazu’s former Deputy Chief of Staff, Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Chief Charles Ogbonnaya, among others, had equally sounded similar warning.
They all condemned PDP’s recent simultaneous zoning of the 2023 governorship ticket to Abia-North and Abia-Central senatorial districts, alleging it is a plot to actualise the speculated Ngwa self -succession agenda.
