The former National Youth Leader of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Sunday Udeh-Okoye, has predicted that “another South-East state will soon fall under the control of the All Progressives Congress (APC).”
He made this claim on Tuesday during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today. Udeh-Okoye’s prediction followed his own defection, alongside other party leaders in Enugu State, to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) on Tuesday with Governor Peter Mbah.
Okoye warned:“Just wait and see; very soon, another state will fall in the South-East to the APC,” Okoye said, noting that the party’s growing influence in the South-East was unstoppable.
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When asked which state he was referring to, Okoye “declined to disclose details, saying the information was classified.”
He insisted that the recent defections were not about crushing the opposition but about leadership and management failures within the PDP.
Governor Mbah was received by Vice President Kashim Shettima, Senate President Godswill Akpabio, the APC National Chairman, Nentawe Yilwatda, and other APC leaders.
The South-East geopolitical zone consists of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo States. Currently, the APC governs Imo, Ebonyi, and Enugu States, while Anambra remains under the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and Abia under the Labour Party.
Okoye dismissed suggestions that defectors were coerced or financially induced to join the ruling party.
“How can APC threaten us?” he asked. “APC is not offering us anything other than good management.”
“These managers know whom to respect, whom to obey, and who can give them victory. This decision is without any inducement, not even verbal. Forget about money, we are not poor or beggars,” he argued.
He blamed the PDP’s “internal leadership crisis” for the wave of defections and said the party “had been poorly managed for years.”
Asked if the PDP was now a spent force, Okoye said bluntly:“PDP is not only dead, what you now have in Enugu, if it still exists at all, is a carcass, nobody is there. Who is remaining? The party is dead, the only party that is alive in Enugu today is APC.”
“I am from Enugu. I was born in Enugu and grew up here, so anybody who is telling you that Enugu is PDP…PDP or APC is a human being; we were the ones who made PDP what it was in Enugu. All of us have left the party,” he added.
He stated that the governors, commissioners, BOT members, and local government leaders “have left the party.”
The former opposition party chieftain further blamed the party’s collapse on its top officials:“Umar Damagum (party chairman), Samuel Anyanwu (National secretary), and the National Organising Secretary, Umar Bature; these three are pure undertakers. They didn’t come to grow the party; they came to bury it,” he alleged.
The ex-party chieftain was previously involved in a leadership tussle with Samuel Anyanwu over the PDP’s National Secretary position.
He maintained that his intention then was to “fix the PDP,” but claimed Anyanwu lacked the capacity to manage the party’s affairs.
“PDP would have experienced a big change if I were National Secretary,” he said.
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