Southeast: Politics of 2019, defections

• Of Deal Makers Trading Places

For the greater part of Nigeria’s return to democracy, the Southeast geopolitical zone could be described as the bastion of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Prior to the historic defeat of the party in 2015 election, the fortune of the erstwhile ruling party has been on a steady downward slide.
  
Enugu State is about the only place in Southeast where opposition has found it very hard to disturb the flow of political power since 1999. PDP finds an easy electoral bargain store in the state. Perhaps, as a result, the state had been rewarded with the positions of President and Deputy President of Senate. Enugu is also on record as having produced the National Secretary and National Chairman of PDP.
 
Ebonyi State, which could have been very near to that record, fell far short having not produced a party functionary other than deputy national secretary even when it produced a President of Senate. But Ebonyi cannot forget 2003, 2011 and 2015 in a hurry on account of the massive inroad opposition political parties made in the state, by harassing day light out of PDP.

BUT commentators on Southeast politics had noted that while PDP held sway as the ruling party, most political actors in the zone saw the platform as the easiest route to elective positions. Thus falling back on the fangled federal might, elections were rigged as candidates were imposed such that instead of the law, cash ruled.
 
Next to that, the PDP system made governors tin gods as they decided who goes where either in the National, State or Local government council. Dictating the political tune, politicians from the zone effortlessly danced according to the governors’ political lullaby. 
 
It is against that background that the recent rash of defections in Southeast is predicated. No sooner had PDP fallen from political grace than most of the Southeast governors started making overtures towards the new ruling party and political leaders. Oblivious of their theatricals during the 2015 election, some of the governors began to tailor their governance style after that of President Muhammadu Buhari, in obvious attempt to be more APC than APC.

THERE is no official statement to that effect, but sources have hinted that APC plans to select its presidential running mate in 2019 from Southeast. In response to that kite, most political front-liners, including former President of Senate, Ken Nnamani, Senator Jim Nwobodo, former Governor Orji Uzor Kalu, started crossing over to APC they spurned before.
 
But while the lure of vice president and other perks from membership of the ruling party may explain the defection of some prominent politicians to the ruling party, the forthcoming governorship in Anambra has added a new dimension to the mad rush into APC.
 
It is generally believed by most governorship aspirants in the state that the APC ticket amounts to an automatic electoral victory. Most moneybags, out of fear of possible persecution or strangulation of their businesses have moved or are planning to move over to APC.
 
In states where the governors are PDP in name, but APC in spirit, many lawmakers are also planning to jump ship, in the belief that the governors would as usual determine who makes it to the National or States Assembly. This thinking must have fueled speculations that the Deputy President of Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, was holding clandestine talks with some leaders of APC to perfect defection plans.
 
Even before Senator Kabiru Marafa voiced his unsolicited advice, fears that the fourth term Senator may be heading to APC started making the rounds in Enugu when it became obvious that the state governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, has only time and circumstance between him and the ruling party.
 
But in the case of Ekweremadu, those who are in the know claim that he is positioning himself to take advantage of the new gesture of friendship from the Presidency to the Southeast, especially given the prediction that the President is disposed to having a President of Senate from the zone to confer a semblance of balance in his administration and douse the flame of secessionist agitations.
 
However, Ekweremadu came out through a statement released on his behalf by his Assistant on Political Matters, to deny interest in defection. Yet some political watchers insist that the DSP knows that the CCT was programmed to convict Saraki and that in such eventuality only his membership of APC could guarantee his transition.
  
They say Ekweremadu could be forced out of office when the only Senator from Southeast in APC is supported to be Senate President since it would be quite odd for President and Deputy to come from one geopolitical zone. “It was such a scenario that informed Senator Marafa conditionality,” they claim.   
 
On the other hand worried by alleged subterranean moves to have the Deputy President of Senate to defect to APC, Enugu State chapter of the party came out publicly to warn that such a move would create further mess in the polity.
 
Enugu APC in a statement signed by its Publicity Secretary, Mrs. Kate Offor, recalled that the election of Ekweremadu as the deputy president of senate poisoned the emergence of Senator Bukola Saraki as the Senate President, adding that for him to defect to the ruling party would not only cause chaos in the Senate, but also in the state chapter.“We don’t want one party state; most importantly we don’t want him to infest APC with confusion, which is his trademark in the PDP from the time of Governor Chimaroke Nnamani in 1999 till date,” Offor declared.
  
Apart from faulting Section 68(g) upon which some politicians were standing to lure Ekweremadu to APC, Enugu APC said: “Whatever is the position of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, we want him to remain in PDP. We wish to make it very clear that Ekweremadu is an unwanted guest in Enugu State APC. Let him stay and salvage the inferno festering in the PDP.”