THE national leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, yesterday, vowed to challenge in court the defection of Governor Sheriff Oborevwori of Delta State, his predecessor, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa, and the entire party structure in the state, following the gale of defections that rocked the party, as chairman of the Board of Trustees, BoT, Senator Ebere Wabara, said the All Progressives Congress, APC, would soon implode.
The party also directed its South-South Zonal Caretaker Committee to oversee its affairs in Delta State, just as it announced May 27, 2025, for its NEC meeting.
Wabara also said there was no cause for alarm, describing Oborevwori and Okowa’s defection from the PDP as a blessing in disguise.
Meanwhile, the 2023 Vice-Presidential candidate of the party, Senator Okowa, yesterday, revealed that he discussed with former Vice President Atiku Abubakar before defecting to the APC.
He also dismissed insinuations that his defection was caused by alleged hounding by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.
Addressing journalists after a meeting of the party’s National Working Committee, NWC, the acting National Chairman, Ambassador Umar Damagum, said going to court will enable the party reclaim its mandate.
While arguing that the defectors were elected on the platform of the party, Damagum also disclosed that the party has mandated the South-South Zonal Caretaker Chairman, Mr Emma Ogidi, to take over the structure of the Delta PDP, mandating him to head-hunt for new party leaders and ignore the Chief Dan Orbih-led structure. He said the party has approved the resolutions of the governors, with a resolve to hold a convention in August and the National Executive Committee, NEC, meeting on May 27, 2025.
On the recent defections, the acting PDP chairman said: “I want to use this opportunity to once again condemn what happened in Delta State. We’ve taken it with all sorts of regret and the pains that have gone down with us.
‘’I want to also use this opportunity to tell Nigerians that election is not conducted by the NWC. They (APC) can coerce, cajole and intimidate our members into joining them but they can only do that because they feel they have what it takes.
“So I want to urge our supporters to remain calm. We’ve just instructed the Zonal Caretaker Committee to oversee the party in Delta State after dissolving all the structures that were there since majority of them have shifted. Soon, we will constitute a caretaker committee.”
PDP’ll go to court — DAMAGUM
On the PDP going to court, Damagum said: “We have also instructed the National Legal Adviser to recover our mandate that they have taken away. The fortunes of this party cannot just be left in the hands of our adversaries, so we will take legal action to retrieve those mandates as far as the Electoral Act says whenever you leave, you must leave the chair that you have occupied.
“So, we are going to still do that, but we are going to also warn that party members should be faithful to the party.
“We will soon have a convention to usher in new executives, so I want to say here that we will continue to be one indivisible party and no amount of intimidation or mischief can bring down this party.
“It has survived all sorts of machinations in the past and this one is just a child’s play. We have all seen it already and we’re looking forward to 2027 when the country will speak based on the existing hardship that has been deliberately imposed on the people.
“We have adopted the recommendations that have been laid down and it will be forwarded to the NEC of the party.
“The NEC will be held on May 27, 2025, while the convention will be held around August 28, 29, and 30, but it is a proposal, subject to approval by NEC.”
Also speaking with journalists, the South-South Zonal Caretaker Committee Chairman, Mr Emma Ogidi, said: “We have been given the assignment to oversee Delta State. Our job is to go there, take stock of what is left, address members, give them confidence and then, of course, head-hunt good people that we are going to recommend to the NWC for confirmation as members of the caretaker committee. What happened to us was a great blow, we didn’t expect it.”
APC’ll soon implode — Wabara
Reacting to the defections, the chairman of the PDP BoT, Senator Adolphus Wabara, said though the party will miss the defectors, it would not deplete its fortunes in 2027.
Senator Wabara, in a chat with Vanguard, also warned that the APC would implode.
He said: “APC will soon implode as a result of the defection of PDP members coming to displace loyal APC faithful who have laboured to build their party.
“The PDP will laugh last because very soon, there will be implosion in the APC. Those people joining the APC will soon want to displace the party members who have built the APC over the years. The displaced APC members will look for where to go, and they will simply come over to the PDP.”
“For those who doubt my political reach, they should wait till the next election and those who doubted my political reach (in the 2023 presidential election) when we went into the governorship election, it was obvious who were the masters of the game.
“For us in Delta State, we know what we contribute to the nation’s purse. We have been in opposition for 10 years and if we were sure that we would be competitive enough to be able to, as a party, take over governance, probably we would not have given thought to whatever is going on. As of today, the APC appears to be working hard to retain power.”
On whether it was all about getting into power and not on ideologies, he said: “There is hardly anything you can say about any party having a particular ideology.
“Unfortunately for us as a nation, we have not moved in the direction of any party becoming ideological. If you watch the various manifestos of the different parties in the last elections, you find that they are almost the same. No party appears to have ideological principles that hold them down.
“We have refused to, as a people, refuse to build our parties to have a particular ideology and it appears that parties in Nigeria are only being used as vehicles for elections and that is the true position at the moment.”
Dismissing insinuations that his defection was instigated by the EFCC, he said: “In the first place, there are no sins to be forgiven because no sins were committed. A communication was sent to me, I was overseas at that time and when I returned, I reported to the EFCC to answer their queries.
“As I said at that time, I am not afraid of being investigated because I have worked for Delta State.”
While he faulted the comments made by former Senate President, Senator Bukola Saraki, about his defection, Okowa said he (Saraki) had no moral right to criticise his decision.
He said: “I did not expect that someone like Senator Bukola Saraki should be able to speak concerning me, because he knows that he had also moved to APC before and eventually returned. So he has had movement to and fro. So, I don’t think he has the moral right to even speak about my defection at all.
“Several things have been going on in the party. While I do not want to join issues with people, as stakeholders, our leaders in this state have sat down to look at the events in the last several months, and because of the events that we see and the communications coming out from the leadership of the PDP at the moment, it did not appear to us that that (PDP) was a proper political vehicle for us to continue in.”
Credit: Vanguard News Nigeria