The defection of Ebonyi State Governor, Dave Umahi, from All Progressive Congress (APC) to Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has been generating series of controversies.
Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike on Thursday warned his counterpart against destroying the political future of the southeast because of his presidential ambition.
Wike said no one would deny Umahi the right to pursue his political aspiration, which is the primary reason for defecting to the All Progressives Congress (APC), he should not destroy the Southeast.
He stated this in a television programme, stressing that Umahi was ungrateful for insisting that he left the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to protest the injustice the party had meted to the Southeast since 1999.
Governor Wike insisted that Umahi was unhappy with PDP because former Governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi, was chosen to run as Vice Presidential candidate with Atiku Abubakar in 2019.
“At the 2018 convention that produced our Atiku as a presidential candidate, he (Atiku) consulted widely and picked Obi as his vice, but Umahi was livid because he wanted to run for Vice President. But what disturbs me most is why Umahi thinks that anything that comes to Southeast must be given to him,” he said
Governor Wike argued that Umahi could not be talking of injustice when he practices injustice against the Southeast zone by installing his two brothers as Zonal Vice Chairman and Deputy State Chairman of the party.
“If he believes in equity and justice, will he be doing such? It is because he has planted these people that the state House of Assembly had the effrontery to give the National Working Committee (NWC) orders to zone the presidency to the Southeast. Where does such a thing happen? No other party has done zoning. You can imagine his level of selfishness,” he added.
He also described Umahi’s claim that he made PDP what it is in the Southeast zone as the only financier of all of its activities as untrue, insisting that such claim suggested that governors of Anambra, Abia, and Enugu states did nothing to ensure the success of the party in the zone.
Wike also dismissed Umahi’s claim that he (Wike) was a dictator who imposed Uche Secondus as PDP National Chairman, describing the allegation as spurious and that evidence abounds that Secondus was elected at the PDP National Convention.
He noted that Umahi was treacherous, adding that when the party’s caucus decided that Kingsley Chinda should be elected Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, Umahi told representatives from his state to work against it, among other instances