With barely 24-hours to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Governorship primary in Delta State, Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan has withdrawn his support for Mr. Anthony Obuh, the unpopular retired bureaucrat from the Delta North Senatorial District that he drafted into the governorship race and backed to succeed him in office in 2015, multiple authoritative sources with knowledge of the development have said.
The development confirms feelers that Uduaghan has been in disarray since he was pressured out of the Delta South Senate race by President Goodluck Jonathan on Friday.
David Edevbie, who was adopted by the Urhobo Progressive Union (UPU) as its sole candidate for the governorship with Uduaghan’s influence, served as former commissioner for Finance throughout Chief James Ibori’s 8-year tenure as Governor of Delta State. Ibori thereafter facilitated his appointment as Principal Secretary to deceased President Umaru Yar’Adua, where he played an ignoble role in the power play that almost brought the nation to its knees during the last days of then seriously ill President Yar’Adua.
The party in the state had in principle zoned the governorship to Delta north, the only zone that is yet to produce a governor.
An embittered Uduaghan, who is believed to be playing the spoiler, met with leaders from the Urhobo land last night in Warri and Sapele to push the Edevbie project, authoritative sources told THEWILL.
Uduaghan reportedly opted to support Edevbie so as to get even with leaders and stakeholders from Delta North for rejecting Obuh, often described as weak and lacking capacity to lead a complex state like Delta.
Delta North leaders had asked Uduaghan to choose his successor amongst Senator Ifeanyi Okowa, Rt. Hon. Victor Ochei and Hon. Ndudi Elumelu, three top aspirants they argued had better capacity than Obuh with statewide acceptability.
THEWILL can also report that the Vice Chairman of the Delta State PDP for Central, Chief Tom Amioku, has called a meeting of all Urhobo delegates to the primary election slated for tomorrow.
Uduaghan’s fragile popularity in Delta State suffered a huge blow due to Obuh’s rejection by the political class and stakeholders statewide. It is however not clear whether Uduaghan, who has been at war with the political class and elites still has enough political capital to pull this off. Uduaghan drop.
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