Commissioner speaks as two APC chieftains confirm Umahi’s defection from PDP
Ebonyi State Commissioner for Information and Orientation, Uchenna Orji, has said that only Governor Dave Umahi would decide if he would leave the Peoples Democratic Party or not.
Orji made the disclosure in Abakaliki on Sunday while reacting to the statement by the All Progressives Congress that the governor had concluded plans to defect to the party.
The Commissioner told the News Agency of Nigeria that “it was better to get to the bridge first before thinking on how to cross it”.
“What is important is that we enjoy good governance in Ebonyi but it will be better to hear from the horse’s mouth because I am not the horse,” he said.
NAN reports that Senator Julius Ucha, an APC Leader in Ebonyi State, on Sunday declared that Umahi is actually on his way to join the party from the PDP.
Ucha, the former representative of Ebonyi Central Senatorial District and now a member of the National Assembly Service Commission, disclosed this during the party’s stakeholders meeting in Abakaliki.
The former Speaker of the Ebonyi State House of Assembly and an APC gubernatorial candidate, said the matter had been concluded at the appropriate quarters and was no longer a joke.
He said: “This will ensure that for the first time, APC will be in control of governance in the state and will make the governors of other South East states to declare for the party.
“I told President Muhammadu Buhari during his visit to the state in 2017 that governors are very powerful individuals who could not be ignored in any way.
“We should continue praying that nothing stops this move because the world’s greatest wireless connection is prayer.”
Ucha urged the party faithful to unite in actualising the objective, noting that factionalisation will be detrimental to the cause.
He said: “The struggle for party leadership does not make sense as I have been struggling since I left the Peoples Democratic Party for the All Nigeria Peoples Party.
“The struggles in most cases have been in vain and I will not continue to struggle or be interested in factions.
“Party faithful should also ensure they register in the forthcoming party’s registration exercise because ‘overtaking’ is allowed in party affairs.”
Senator Anthony Agbo, former representative of Ebonyi North Senatorial District, also declared that APC in the state had made a “big catch” with the governor’s intending move to the party.
Agbo said: “This also implies that the party in the South East has made a big catch and the party in Nigeria making possibly the biggest catch with the intended move.
“We, the APC leaders, are presently making the move public as the governor has excelled in infrastructural transformation among other sectors of governance.”
NAN reports that state’s political sphere has been dominated by the reports of Umahi’s defection to the APC, but the governor recently said that he was still a member of the PDP. (NAN)
