The All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) appears to be the main beneficiary in the defection gale currently sweeping through the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Anambra State, but stakeholders of the PDP don’t think so. Assistant Editor, Sam Nwaoko, reports that the development is weakening the party in the state, as the 2011 general election approaches.

The gale of defection that has struck the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Anambra State has obviously wreaked havoc on the party in the state and results from feelers  on the development show that its end is not in sight yet. As a matter of fact, the recent announcement of a caretaker committee to oversee the affairs of the party in the state by its national chairman, Dr Okwesilieze Nwodo, is believed by some high-ranking members of the party to be the final undoing of the PDP in the state.

The elegy for the PDP in Anambra  has been on the lips of many people right from its troublous days when Dr Chris Ngige was the state governor. With the build-up to the governorship election of February 2010, there were new vistas of divergence ostensibly created by the erstwhile national chairman, Prince Vincent Ogbulafor, with his alleged support for the emergence of Professor Chukwuma Soludo as the PDP candidate for the election. Numerous other members of the party who were interested in the governorship became upset that the party was exhibiting blatant favouritism and refused to respect their feelings. The result was that the PDP did not just lose the Anambra governorship election to the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), it came a surprising third behind the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) represented by Dr Ngige.

The end of the election saw the emergence of Mr Cosmos Agagbo as the head of a caretaker committee, saddled with the responsibility of reconciling aggrieved members and conducting re-registration of members and conducting a fresh congress, among sundry fence-mending duties. That was about the last major action of Prince Ogbulafor on the beleaguered Anambra PDP before he resigned from office in early May. The end of the Ogbulafor era left the Agagbo-led caretaker committee in a kind of limbo in which it was until the composition and inauguration of another 30-man caretaker committee, headed by Emmanuel Nweze recently by Nwodo. The new committee was also given a mandate similar to that which the Agagbo team was pursuing.

Rather than attract applause, however, the action of Nwodo and the Nweze-led committee itself have drawn the ire of numerous PDP faithful in Anambra and beyond. Many members of the party in the state claim not to know Nweze or the things he had done as a politician before his appointment. PDP members in Anambra are angry with Dr Nwodo because they also believe that his action, rather than revive the party in the state, has only helped to throw it deeper into crisis as well as throw spanner in the works for the safe delivery of the Anambra State for President Jonathan, should he decide to run.

The PDP faithful in the state are aghast that three months or thereabout to a general election, the national leadership of the party installed a caretaker committee headed by a man that they said had never run a party at any level before or ever contested an election. They also doubt his membership of the PDP. They feel the national chairman has tactically put the PDP at a disadvantage because, according to them, most of the lawmakers from the state were only waiting for Nwodo’s move on the party in the state before they decide to exit the party. “The Nweze we are talking about does not know the chairman of the PDP in his ward. He does not know the address of the party secretariat in the state. He has never been involved in the politics of the state and cannot be said to be a card-carrying member of the party. In short, he is a total stranger to the PDP in the state,” a concerned member told the Nigerian Tribune in Awka recently.

Another member of the PDP, who also voiced his concern to the Nigerian Tribune, said “the numerous actions of the national chairman of the party have encouraged groups like IBB Mandate Group to come out boldly, and part of the things they will tell our people is that it is General Ibrahim Babangida that created Anambra State and all that. Nwodo is tactically selling the zone to Babangida because the PDP in Anambra is the heartbeat of the party in the South-East region as the people who will bring out the money are here. If we get it wrong here, then it will be very difficult to make any progress elsewhere in the region. And that will spell doom for the quest by President Goodluck Jonathan to win the presidency.”

The stakeholders said the way forward was for the PDP, particularly in Anambra State, is for the relevant officers to put machinery in motion to stem the spate of resignations from the party which, they said, had been heightened by the recent actions of Nwodo. So far, many prominent members of the party in the state have defected to APGA and information got by the Nigerian Tribune says that many more, especially members of the National Assembly, would dump the party. Those still left in the party, like Senator Annie Okonkwo, have vehemently denied the rumours that they would soon join the train out of the PDP. Okonkwo, representing Anambra Central in the Senate, is currently the de-facto leader of the party in the state since the former vice president, Dr Alex Ekwueme, has now been slowed down a bit by age.

Speaking with the Nigerian Tribune on the development, a chieftain of the party in the state, Chuma Nwofor, said it was admissible to say that the national chairman of the PDP had mad an error in his choice of the current caretaker committee chairman. According to Nwofor, the best Nwodo would have done for the party in the state was for him “to hear the voice of the stakeholders in Anambra State which is that we want to conclude our congress.” In the alternative, he suggested that “he should have put a caretaker committee made up of members who know the party or even leave the caretaker committee that was there, as we have not complained.”

The former governorship aspirant also alleged that “Dr. Nwodo did not consult with Dr. Ekwueme, the highest ranking member of the party in Anambra State, on who to hand the party over to in the state,” saying “it is even an insult that Dr. Ekwueme was sidelined in the whole process because a candidate selected by Ekwueme would have earned the respect of most of the members.”

Nwofor said with the current set up in Anambra PDP, “Nwodo has succeeded in creating more confusion and has hurt the chances of our party making an impact in the state during the elections.”

Also expressing his views on the current state of the party in Anambra, the state coordinator of PDP Grassroots Forum, Joseph Nwabueze, said some issues were yet to be ironed out after a meeting he said they had in Abuja recently. “At that meeting, it was said that all members who had cases in court should withdraw them unconditionally as a way forward. But there was no conclusion on their grievances and how to pacify them. Some of us suggested that those at the national executive should resign so that when they withdraw the cases they will find a level playing field,” Nwabueze said.

Meanwhile, the new caretaker committee members have said they are still consulting stakeholders in the state to fashion out the way forward. The vice chairman of the new group, Martins Uzodike, said recently when he was cornered by newsmen in Awka, the Anambra State capital, that the committee was still in consultation with various interests and groups and that there would be a statement at the appropriate time. The people are waiting.