When the Akwa Ibom State governor, Pastor Umo Eno formally defects to the APC this Friday at the exco chambers, Government House, Uyo, the state PDP Chairman, Elder Aniekan Akpan will not be joining him, TNN can authoritatively reveal.
It was learnt that Akpan will be staying back in the PDP to keep the party structures for Eno. Apart from Akpan, it was also learnt that a few other party officials may also hang on in the PDP. Their main duty will be to protect Eno’s interest in the PDP against those who may want to pick the party’s ticket to give the governor a fight in 2027.
Sources confided in TNN that an arrangement is to be made to get someone to play the role of a place holder-a candidate who will simply have the PDP ticket, but who would have known from the beginning, that the ticket is not for a fight against Eno.
A few weeks ago, Eno had given a clue to this. He had announced that even though he would be leaving the PDP, he would still be in charge of the party.
The state party chairman and Eno are very close. Many of the projects listed under Ukanafun Local Government where the PDP chairman comes from, are sited in his Ikot Oku Usung village.
Only recently, the chairman was enmeshed in a controversy and was attacked on social media, after the names of his children were spotted among beneficiaries of the special grant for less privileged farmers and artisans in the state.
For the first time, Eno will be handed a broom this Friday. With the broom, an official introduction into the ruling party where he would be working with the senate president, Senator Godswill Akpabio, Eno would be sure of an almost peaceful and stress-free second term election.
TNN had reported earlier, that Eno decided to defect to the APC for fear of a fight with Akpabio during the 2023 elections. He has been consulting and lobbying stakeholders, as he prepares to abandon the party under whose umbrella he rode to stardom.
It is not clear if all his appointees would follow him to the APC. Already, some of them have already resigned their appointment, informing the governor that they could not join the APC with him.
But it was learnt that all the elected house of assembly and National Assembly members under the PDP would quit the party for the APC on Friday with the governor. The governor recently bought brand new SUVs for the lawmakers.
It suspected that one of the commissioners, Ini Ememobong, who had tongue-lashed Akpabio during his days as spokesperson of the PDP, at a time that Akpabio was battling to get into the senate under the APC, may not follow Eno to the ruling party.
TNN reached him on Tuesday to confirm if he would defect to the APC where he would have to operate under the same Akpabio he had pilloried and had to even call for the examination of the senate president’s mental state, many years ago.
But his answer was simple: let Friday come. The best answer for what will happen on Friday will be on Friday.
On the other hand, the PDP chairman merely laughed when TNN asked if he was going to abandon his leadership position in the PDP to join the APC. He told our correspondent to wait till Friday when everything would be unveiled.
The other aspect of the defection saga is that those who are currently occupying leadership positions in their local governments as political leaders under the PDP, may cease to be so regarded as soon as they leave the party for the APC.
It also means that they would find it difficult to dictate where political power goes in their local government, as power brokers within the APC in those local governments would be calling the shots.
