Professor Udenta O Udenta, a Founding National Secretary of the now defunct Alliance for Democracy (AD) has described governors and other high-profile politicians are defecting from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as “cowardly, chicken hearted and gutless.”
Since the 2023 general elections, at least four governors – Sheriff Oborevwori (Delta), Umo Eno, (Akwa Ibom), Peter Mbah (Enugu) and Douye Diri (Bayelsa) – have left the PDP.
Even though the Bayelsa State Governor is yet to announce his next destination, analysts are of the view that like others, he would join the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC.
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Aside from the governors, the Presidential candidate of the PDP in the last election, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has left the party, his running mate, Ifeanyi Okowa, has equally left.
Speaking on the development, Udenta said the governors lack the appreciation of the genealogy of power, or its ancestry, and how they rose to prominence in the first place.
“For example, how did they climb to the top? Who mentored them? Who taught them the art and purpose of politics, power, responsibility and accountability? Those who abandon a party at the site of challenges are not fit to be called leaders.
“Take the case of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who I criticize quite often, and in my view very objectively. You have to give it to him that he prepared for power very scrupulously, very deliberately and very intentionally. That is why he is toying with some of these politicians with casual ease and denying them the autonomy of political expression and practice which he exercised between 1999 and 2007 when he was an opposition governor, particularly when he led the charge against the PDP capture of South West in 2003.”
He said the President who as governor battled former President Olusegun Obasanjo is now making governors and the senators to abandon their parties, betray the people’s sacred trust and follow him.
“And sleepily and cowardly, with their tails between their legs, some of them are obliging him. We even hear that in some states, commissioners wear dresses with the image of the President engraved on to them!
“Some of these governors can give you any amount of reason to justify their perfidy, including for example that their party is in crisis, as if conflict is not a normal human condition you have to live with, deal with, transform and resolve. If you flee from your party because it is in crisis, you are not fit to be a leader, you are not fit to be followed and respected by the people.
“But some are fleeing from their party because they lack what I have already described as the ancestry of power. You will notice that real politicians, real leaders, will dig in, reach compromises, make adjustments and remain resolute and focused because they believe in something, they are made of a sterner stuff and because they are guided by moral clarity. ”
Udenta said many politicians can’t resist the pressure mounted on them to decamp from their parties because they don’t know the meaning of power and the responsibilities that come with it.
“They lack an understanding of the logic of federalism and separation of power not as a theoretical exercise but as a practical administrative procedure which a certain Sen Bola Ahmed Tinubu understood clearly between 1999 and 2007 in his relationship with the President Obasanjo centre and in his activist mindset and bitter contestation of power with successor PDP Presidents from 2007 to 2015.
“These governors lack the courage to tell Mr President that while I respect you as our president, you should respect us as the duly elected governors of our states and not your appointee. The case of Enugu state Governor who talks about the PDP marginalizing the Zone since 1999 is absurd because with the exception of the office of the President and the vice president the PDP gave the South Eastern political elite everything.”
