By Joshua Tosin Ogunsakin 
The Board of Trustees (BoT) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has relocated its meetings from the party’s national secretariat in Abuja for security reasons.
Chairman of the BoT, Sen Adolphus Wabara, who presided over an emergency meeting of the board at a popular Abuja hotel, lamented the unfortunate event that played out last week in which thugs were brought it to disrupt the party’s meeting.
He announced that, at the emergency meeting, the BoT adopted Sunday Ude-Okoye as the party’s national secretary.
Meanwhile, the Senate turned into a battleground as lawmakers from the All Progressives Congress (APC) slugged it out with their counterparts from the opposition PDP over the defection of Sen Ned Nwoko (PDP, Delta North) to the APC.
Now in APC, Nwoko warned Governor Sheriff Oborevwori to perish the idea of defecting to the APC, as he would not be welcomed.
PDP BoT charged the National Working Committee (NWC) to immediately recognise and swear in Ude-Okoye to allow him to perform his duties as National Secretary of PDP.
Governors elected on the platform of the party rose from a meeting in Asaba, Delta State, last week and adopted Ude-Okoye for the position.
But Sen Sam Anyanwu dismissed the adoption as inconsequential because it came from a body that is not an organ of the PDP, but a pressure group.
Security concerns arose when Anyanwu, in a petition to the Inspector General of Police (IGP), asked the police to stop any attempt to disrupt the peace by a forceful implementation of the judgment of the Enugu division of the Court of Appeal.
In a petition dated February 1, 2025, and addressed to the IGP, Anyanwu stated that the governors’ advice to the NWC to implement the court judgment was an invitation to chaos.
Yesterday’s meeting of the BoT also adopted the report of the committee it set up last week and declared that there was no stay execution against the judgment of the Enugu division of the Court of Appeal against the removal of Anyanwu as secretary.
A communiqué released at the end of the meeting noted that the BoT had decided to “assert its inherent authority under Section 32 (5)(a) of the PDP Constitution (as amended in 2017), which empowers it to “ensure highest standards of morality in all the activities of the party by acting as the conscience of the party, with powers to call to order any officer of the party, whose conduct falls below the norms.”
According to the communiqué, the BoT exhaustively considered and adopted the report of its committee led by Kabiru Turaki (SAN) on the issue of the PDP National Secretary, especially concerning the declarative judgment of the High Court of Enugu as upheld by the Court of Appeal.
It stated, “Consequently, the BoT, by adopting the report, recognises Sunday Udeh-Okoye as the substantive National Secretary of the PDP in full obedience to the declaratory judgment of the High Court of Enugu as also upheld by the Court of Appeal, there being no contrary or overriding judgment from any Court of superior jurisdiction.”
It commended the PDP Governors’ Forum (PDPGF), NWC, South East Executive Committee and all other organs of the party for their steadfastness in upholding the provisions of the Constitution and operational guidelines of the PDP.
THE Senate plenary session, which was expected to proceed with legislative business, quickly descended into heated exchanges as PDP senators challenged Nwoko’s defection, arguing that the party was not in crisis and, therefore, his move was unconstitutional.
The debate began when the Senate Minority Leader, Abba Moro, raised a constitutional point of order, questioning whether there was a legitimate division in the PDP’s NWC to justify Nwoko’s defection.
As Moro engaged the Deputy President of the Senate, Jibril Barau; Senate Leader, Opeyemi Bamidele; and the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, Barau said the Constitution allows any person to defect provided there is a division in the party.
“Everybody in the country knows that there is a division; you have the Nyesom Wike faction and the Bala Mohammed faction,” he said.
But Moro responded: “I want to say at this point that the PDP is a law-abiding organisation. So, the Court of Appeal made a pronouncement on the secretaryship of the party, and the party is adhering to that decision until it is otherwise ruled.
To Akpabio’s interjection, “What does the Supreme Court say?” Moro said, “The Court of Appeal has ruled that Anyanwu is the secretary of the party until the Supreme Court decides otherwise.”
Speaking to reporters after he was warmly received by the Abdullahi Ganduje-led NWC at the APC national Secretariat in Abuja, yesterday, the Delta North senator adduced what he termed the absence of “capacity” in the part of Oborevwori as the reason he, alongside critical stakeholders of the APC in Delta, would block the governor’s entry into the ruling party.
Nwoko spoke against the backdrop of speculations that the governor was also considering defection as part of a survival strategy to retain his seat in the 2027 poll.
However, Nwoko insisted that the governor could not fit into the APC fold because he had not been answerable and accountable to the people of Delta, which receives over N52 billion monthly from derivation from oil revenues and statutory allocation.
Nwoko, who was accompanied by the Minister of Aviation, Festus Keyamo; former Women Leader of APC, Stella Okotete and other party chieftains and supporters to the secretariat, also ruled out the possibility of him contesting the governorship of Delta on the APC platform in the 2027 poll.