…Gov. Mbah, Wabara, NASS members shun S’East meeting

The National Secretary of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Samuel Anyanwu has alleged that Vice Chairman (South East) Chief Ali Odefa, forged the 2022 PDP electoral guideline to convince South East stakeholders to remove him as National Secretary.

Anyanwu who spoke on Tuesday at a meeting with stakeholders from the zone, said the electoral guideline Odefa presented to Governor Peter Mbah of Enugu State, was neither signed nor dated.

The meeting was however, boycotted by notable stakeholders from the South East, including Governor Mbah, Chairman of the PDP Board of Trustees (BoT) Senator Adolphus Wabara, as well as members of National and House of Assembly and members of the National Working Committee (NWC) from the zone.

Only two state Chairmen, Imo and Abia States and some zonal officers, attended the meeting, as well as Chief Chris Uba.

Odefa and Ologunagba, PDP National Publicity Secretary, had disowned the meeting and said South East leaders held a successful zonal meeting in Enugu last Friday.

“As the National Vice Chairman (South East) and member of the NWC representing the South East, I hereby authoritatively state that no such meeting is scheduled between the South East stakeholders and the NWC,” Odefa said in a statement.

But Anyanwu told the meeting that Odefa is no longer a PDP member, having been expelled from the party by his ward, and said the zonal meeting he presided over in Enugu was illegal, null and void.

He accused Odefa of trying to perpetrate himself in office, adding that that was why he sold the idea to Governor Mbah that the PDP constitution says that for him to run for the 2023 Imo State governorship, he should resign as National Secretary.

“He went and printed fake electoral guidelines for primary election and took it to His Excellency and he bought into it without knowing the truth. Based on that, they now came and told me that I should resign,” Anyanwu stated.

According to him, on November 10, 2023, while he was busy preparing for his governorship election, “they went and got from a state High Court in Enugu and based on this fake document, the judge gave an order that I am supposed to have resigned.

“They told me that someone else has been appointed, one Ude-Okoye has been appointed as National Secretary of the party.

“I was elected through a national convention and it is only through convention that I can be removed.

“They went ahead and told the governor because he is the only governor from the South East that if I become a governor, as former National Secretary of the party, that I will be too powerful and that it is better for him to continue to become the only governor from the South East.”

Anyanwu said he has appealed against the Court of Appeal judgement that sacked him on December 20, 2024, and has obtained a stay of execution.