Though PDP managed the fall out of its choice of candidates and the politics of supremacy in most states, the consequence in Akwa Ibom state seems to have found a new voice as former governor Victor Attah withdrew his membership from the PDP.
The former governor also announced his retirement from partisan politics.
Mr. Attah who was a member of the PDP Board of Trustees address newsmen on Tuesday in Uyo, capital of Akwa Ibom state, saying he will be playing the role of elder stateman and “continue to serve his country with love, strength, and faith.”
The former governor has been accused of being in an “unholy alliance” with the APC and there has been indications that even if Mr. Attah has not tie with the opposition in the state, he will be disposed to seeing the party’s victory up-turned.
“What I had always wanted is beginning to come into focus
“Indeed I made utterances and I stand by all of them including those ones for which I was, from time to time, accused of anti-party activities. The tragedy for the PDP is to now blame its failure on such utterances rather than its perilous refusal to heed the warning they convey,” Mr. Attah said.
He said that if PDP will bounce back, it must stop the blame game and take a critical look at its affairs and reorder its ways alone the dreams of the founding fathers of the party.
“Who does not know that you only conduct election to fill a vacancy. But the PDP would start by announcing that there is no vacancy. Then it would offer ‘automatic tickets’ to a set of people. What manner of democracy!”
Mr. Attah accused his successor of throwing in a dangerous thought during the preparation for the elections when he said that it was his wife, Mrs. Unoma Akpabio who discovered the incumbent governor, Udom Emmanuel.
“Can the national publicity secretary of PDP, an eminent member of the National Working Committee that he is, point to anything in the constitution of the PDP that suggests that it is the wife of an incumbent governor that should nominate her husband’s successor, and having been so nominated, that the party should put its full weight behind the incumbent governor to impose the nominee on the state as his successor?” he asked.
Some prominent members of the PDP were present at the briefing of the press by Mr. Attah. They include a former deputy governor of the state, Nsima Ekere; a former national vice chairman of PDP, South South, Edet Mkpubre; and former chairman of PDP, Akwa Ibom State, Otu Ita Toyo.
The election petition tribunal had ordered fresh governorship elections in 18 out of 31 Local Government Areas to be conducted in 90 days or when the appeal by the PDP is determined. How the turn of events in Akwa Ibow will affect the fortunes of the PDP in the election will remain a case of speculation for now.
