A member of the Peoples Democratic Party in Ward 5, Okpella, Edo State, Prince Kassim Afegbua, has demanded the immediate sack of the National Working Committee chairman of the party, Uche Secondus.
It was the second time in two months Afegbua had raised the alarm over the alleged mismanagement of and gradual disintegration of the party under Secondus, which he noted had led to the gradual exodus of chieftains of the party to the opposition All Progressives Congress.
In a statement on Sunday, Afegbua said it should be of urgent concern to all stakeholders and organs of the party, including the Governors’ Forum, “to arrest this obvious drift which has left our dear party naked before Nigerians, home and abroad.”
He said there is a compelling need to urgently call for a stakeholders’ meeting to mitigate, amongst other things, the obvious decimation of the PDP “by a leadership that is utterly bereft of ideas, confused, intellectually hollow, phlegmatic and absent-minded in the affairs of the nation and the party.”
“An opposition party that should be gaining momentum because of the leadership failures of the ruling APC is at best losing some of her best hands across the nation, and losing the much needed momentum,” he said.
He said further: “When we thought Lagos State PDP was looking good, court judgment uprooted a forward-looking leadership that ought to have added impetus to the party in the state. When we thought we could gain mileage in Anambra, greed and avarice have combined to ridicule the party in the state, producing two factions within 24 hours to undermine a clear opportunity to win back the state.
“As if that was not enough, sheer arrogance of power in Delta State has led to the exit of Senator Nwaboshi to the ruling APC, leaving PDP with a Senator representing Delta on its platform. If you add salt to the injuries already inflicted, the defection of the Zamfara State governor, Bello Mutawallen, to the APC brings double jeopardy to an already bad situation.
“All these portend bad omen for an opposition party that should gain maximum mileage under a system that has been run aground by the menacing incompetence of the APC-led federal government. Rather than act appropriately by creating strategies that could nip this in the bud, the Uche Secondus leadership looks apparently helpless and dithering like a lost sheep in the desert.”
Afegbua said the PDP runs the risk of not fielding any candidate in the Anambra governorship election if the stakeholders fail to rally round to make a better impression about the party’s preparedness.
With the frenzy with which PDP chieftains are defecting to the APC on a regular basis, Afegbua said there is every cause to suspect that “there is possibly a huge conspiracy between the Uche Secondus-led NWC and the Caretaker Committee of the APC.
“I won’t be surprised if by tomorrow Uche Secondus decides to defect to the APC for reasons that are obvious. As I write this, another PDP governor from the South-East is also warming up to defect. Also, another PDP governor from the North-East is warming up to defect, if the right leadership is not put in place to halt this drift.
“The stakeholders of the party should urgently carry out an overhaul that could elicit hope in an atmosphere that is almost becoming hopeless amid a plethora of leadership incompetencies publicly being exhibited by Uche Secondus and his co-travellers,” he said.
He said under Uche Secondus’s watch, three validly elected governors of the PDP have defected to a party that never gave them ticket.
“Even when there are no crises in their respective states, the ease of their exit tells of the crass opportunism of a leadership that is detained by gross incompetence to rally round all factors that could assuage the feelings of these stakeholders,” he noted.
The time to sack Uche Secondus leadership is now, he said, adding that postponing the evil day will only deepen the crisis of confidence that is presently on full throttle across the structures of the party.
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