A House of Representatives member, Rep. Sunday Umeha and over 1,000 members of the Labour Party (LP,) at the weekend, defected to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in Enugu State.
In what seems a historic electoral breakthrough, Rep. Umeha, announced his defection to the APC during a mini-rally at Ibagwa-Aka, in Igboeze South local Government Area.
Similarly, a business mogul and financier of Labour Party in Igboeze South Local Government Area of the state, Chief Joshua Ogbonna, led more than 1,000 members of the party, including the local government structures of the party into the APC.
Speaking on why he attended the APC rally, which was outside his own constituency of Udi/Ezeagu, Rep. Umeha said it was in solidarity with his friend, Chief Ogbonna, disclosing that another rally that would officially usher him into APC would still come up in a matter of days in his local government area.
The lawmaker however, announced that he had already resigned from the Labour Party and registered with APC at his ward, even as he cited the intractable division within the LP, at the national and state levels as one of the reasons for his dumping the party for the APC.
Rep. Umeha said his decision to join the ruling party was also “because of the need to connect to the centre and bring our people closer because there are a lot of advantages in plugging to the center.”
He said that the APC has served the interest of Igbos better than the PDP at the federal level, citing the Enugu-Onitsha Expressway, Enugu-Port-Harcourt Expressway and the 2nd Nigeria Bridge as some of the landmark projects the current ruling party has executed in Igbo land.
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Leader of the APC in Enugu State and Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, Chief Uche Nnaji, represented by George Ogara, said he was elated by the influx of credible and grassroots persons into the APC in the state.
“It’s indeed time for us to come together to retrieve power from those who have been using it to oppress the people.
“What is happening here today, the sheer number of defectors has not happened elsewhere in the state before.
“I urge all of us to remain steadfast because all of us shall be the beneficiaries when victory is achieved,” he said.
Speaking while receiving the defectors, the Enugu State Chairman of the APC, Ugochukwu Agballah, said the party was getting primed to take over Enugu’s seat of power from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2027.
Agballah stated that the PDP’s dominance of governance of the state for 26 years has only brought tears, anguish and sorrow to the people with high taxation, land grabbing, and demolitions of people’s means of livelihood for the purpose of building motor parks, which ordinarily should be the responsibility of local governments.
