Former National Youth Leader of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Sunday Udeh-Okoye, has dismissed claims that members who defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC) were coerced or financially induced.
Speaking on Tuesday, October 14, during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today, Udeh-Okoye insisted that the decision to join the ruling party was made willingly by those involved.
“How can APC threaten us?” he asked. “APC is not offering us anything other than good management. These managers know whom to respect, whom to obey, and who can give them victory.
“This decision is without any inducement, not even verbal. Forget about money, we are not poor or beggars.”
Udeh-Okoye, who recently joined Governor Peter Mbah and other political leaders in Enugu State in defecting to the APC, said the move stemmed from deep frustration with the PDP’s leadership failures.
He criticised the party’s internal structure, blaming its collapse on poor management and a lack of vision.
“PDP is not only dead, what you now have in Enugu, if it still exists at all, is a carcass, nobody is there. The only party that is alive in Enugu today is APC,” he declared.
READ ALSO: Fmr PDP Secretary Udeh-Okoye Resigns, Decries Party’s Moral Decay
According to him, nearly all key stakeholders, including governors, commissioners, and Board of Trustees members, had abandoned the PDP, leaving the party in ruins.
He accused some national leaders of the PDP, including acting National Chairman Umar Damagum, National Secretary Samuel Anyanwu, and National Organising Secretary Umar Bature, of destroying the party.
“These three are pure undertakers. They didn’t come to grow the party; they came to bury it,” he alleged.
Udeh-Okoye maintained that his earlier tussle with Anyanwu for the position of National Secretary was born out of a desire to fix the PDP. “PDP would have experienced a big change if I were National Secretary,” he said.
He further predicted that the APC’s growing strength in the South-East would soon extend to another state, although he declined to name which one, describing the information as classified.
Governor Mbah and other defectors were received into the APC by Vice President Kashim Shettima, Senate President Godswill Akpabio, and National Chairman Nentawe Yilwatda.