Politics
2023: How Peter Obi’s OBIdient Movement Is Changing South-East Politics
By Augustine Adah
Until recently when Peter Obi joined the Labour Party, and before then when the All Progressives Congress, (APC) made incursion into the South-east through judicial pronouncement and defection, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) was the dominant party in the zone.
But all that may change in 2023 if the anger expressed by leaders of the zone on the failure of both the PDP and APC to consider them on their respective presidential tickets is anything to go by.
Observers said the emergence of former Anambra State governor, Mr. Peter Obi, as the standard-bearer of Labour Party (LP) has altered the political calculation in some states of the zone.
The feeling of disappointment among Southeast voters for APC and PDP, coupled with the growing youth enthusiasm for a New Nigeria, which Obi’s candidacy is driving is gradually tilting the political behaviour in the geopolitical zone.
Speaking when both APC and PDP leaders collapsed their structure for Peter Obi in Okigwe Senatorial zone of Imo State, former Deputy Chief of Staff, Imo State Government House, Mr. Chikwem Onuoha, said the people of Imo people were tired of the misrule of both APC and PDP, stressing that time has come to try new leaders.
At the reception held at Umuaro Community, Isiala Mbano Local Government Council, the former Deputy Chief of Staff regretted that APC and PDP have subjected citizens to untold hardship, insisting, “We need someone to rescue the country if we must progress as a nation.”
In Abia State, the former governorship candidate of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in the state, Dr. Alex Otti, who moved over to APC to contest the 2023 governorship, expressed concern over plots by former Minister of State for Solid Mineral and Steel Development, Dr. Uche Ogah and Chief Ikechi Emenike to appropriate the governorship ticket through underhand methods.
Instead of staying back to waste energy and resources in search of a troubled ticket, the former Managing Director of Diamond Bank rushed his structures and supporters to join Peter Obi in LP, where he emerged as the party’s gubernatorial standard-bearer in the South-East state.
No sooner had the two APC factions in the state held parallel primaries than some of the members started joining Otti on the Labour platform, even as a leader of one of the factions, Emenike, was accused of holding indirect primary against the party’s directives.
GreenWhiteGreen GWG reports that also in Anambra State that prominent political actors in the state led by Senator Victor Umeh have also thrown their support behind Peter Obi and Labour Party making the party a dominant party in the evolving political permutations in the South-East state.
Apart from Enugu where observers believe Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi was able to unite PDP members and may find it difficult for any other political party like LP to make incursion, the political scenario in states like Imo, Abia and Ebonyi may change for LP in forthcoming general elections.
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