40 lawmakers, two Governors set to decamp to APC – NASS group tells PDP who to expel

Two governors and roughly 40 parliamentarians are expected to depart the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the upcoming weeks, a House of Representatives member Ikenga Ugochinyere, has revealed.

In an interview with reporters on Friday in Akokwa, Ideato North Local Government Area, Imo State, Ugochinyere bemoaned the growing internal PDP conflict and blamed party officials for not acting swiftly enough to resolve the issue.

He demanded that Samuel Anyanwu and Nyesom Wike, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, be immediately removed from the party for causing division among its members and denounced the party’s leadership for what he called dangerous complacency.

Ugochinyere warned that unless urgent steps are taken, the PDP risks further collapse under the weight of its unresolved conflicts.

He said: “I must also inform you that I have also confirmed that 40 lawmakers elected on the platform of the party are going to decamp from the party in the coming weeks. Look at the state in which we are today. Lawmakers are decamping in mass. Governors are decamping. Two extra governors are about to decamp. I can confirm this.”

Speaking further, he said: “Those days that we were so scared would come are now here with us. We cried, we fought, we begged the PDP leaders to stand up and rescue the party. We told them that there are imposters in the party in the persons of Umar Damagum and Samuel Anyanwu.

“However, PDP governors played with this. PDP stakeholders played with this. We said if the right thing was not done, this party would disintegrate before our own eyes. We said that if Alex Ekwueme, Solomon Lar, Adamu Ciroma and all the founding fathers of this party were alive today and were seeing the goings-on, they would cry over how the once biggest opposition platform in Africa had been turned into a political dog that barked without biting.

“We warned of the threats that these men (Anyanwu and Damagum portend) and the consequences. Today, look at the state of our party. Our governors are jumping ship. Our lawmakers are jumping ship. Our members are jumping ship in different parts of the country. Come to think about it, we may blame outsiders, or those who have decided to work with the APC. But what about ourselves, our governors? What did the governors do, categorically, to resolve this problem?

“When Ayu was removed, the right thing to have been done was to convene a National Executive Meeting, NEC, meeting and find a replacement from the North-Central. However, when the time for NEC came, our governors would say, it was Salah and Muslim people were travelling, then shifted it. When they came back, they would say it is Easter and on it went until this moment. Is that not shameful behaviour? For two years, the leaders of this party could not find a solution to these problems because they decided to sabotage the same platform that gave them whatever they have today.

“For two good years, Damagum has stayed with Ayanwu to carry out a very simple task, which is to decimate the party. I heard Damagum ( reacting to decamping of Delta Governor), saying that our faith is in God’s hands. That is rubbish and an arrant nonsense. Damagum, why are you bringing God into this? How can our faith be in God’s hands? Where was God when you refused to allow a NEC meeting for the North-Central to appoint an acting replacement? Where was God when you kept on shifting it? Where was God when you filed a matter in court against our own PDP in support of those lawmakers who defected from PDP to the All Progressives Congress, APC, in Rivers State, which led us to the crisis of emergency today in Rivers?

“Where was God when you decided to give party structures to members of the APC? Where was God when you kept on supporting the likes of Dan Obi and all those other treacherous elements that were hell-bent on destroying the party? You now talk about our faith being in God’s hands, but you gave Wike the permission to join the APC government while remaining in PDP.

“You are the one that is encouraging them both in Delta and everywhere to decamp, yet you open your mouth to say our faith is in God’s hand. You are sitting in a position that you have no legal rights to sit. It’s on this point I want to alert our party members that Damagum and Anyanwu have once again perfected a new plot to ensure that the NEC meeting of May to where these issues would be rectified does not hold. They have also perfected a plot to ensure that the August convention is aborted if they will not be the ones to be re-elected.

“I need to give our party members information that they have perfected a plan, a very ridiculous one and insulting, to re-elect Damagum and Anyanwu as officers of the party in August. Where that is not possible and where they cannot get a stooge, they will ensure that the convention is aborted. This is so painful. Damagum is still sitting and saying that our faith is in God’s hands. Let me call on the members of the NWC that the whole world is watching them and if they want to be taken seriously two critical things must be done.

“One, the unconditional expulsion of Samuel Anyanwu and Nyesom Wike from the party. Are we cowards? This is the demand of stakeholders of the party. Nobody in Nigeria can take the party seriously. If ordinary expulsion of those who have committed to kill the party cannot be carried out by the NWC, those who want the right to be done in the NWC are in majority. Therefore, convene an NWC meeting with or without Damagum and carry out this action. Yes, there will be turbulence at the initial stage but we will survive it. I am asking members of the NWC, those who are progressives, who are a majority, this is the time to act.”