By Ike Chima
The Imo PDP Critical Stakeholders, a group that says it is working to stabilize the People’s Democratic Party in the state, in a fresh well articulated letter addressed to the acting national chairman of the party, has raised fresh allegations of anti party activities against its governorship candidate, Senator Samuel Anyanwu otherwise known as Samdaddy who is also the national secretary of the party.
In a release signed by the spokesperson of the group, Comrade Kenneth Chukwuemeka Akunnakwe, dated Jujy 16, 2023 and made available to journalists in Owerri, the crusaders pointed fingers at Samddady as being the main reason PDP is shreds in Imo State.
“It is both unconscionable and intolerable that the National Secretary of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, Senator Samuel Anyanwu otherwise known as Samdaddy, who also doubles as our governorship candidate for the November 11, 2023 election in Imo, is the same man at the center of the continued destruction and dismantling of the party structure in his own state”, the Critical Stakeholders alleged.
In the letter, the group recounted how it had in the past written a series of letters to relevant PDP authorities, complaining of Senator Anyanwu’s gross misconducts against the party. “We, the Imo PDP Critical Stakeholders have been, over the months, through a series of interactions with both the State Working Committee, (SWC), National Working Committee (NWC), as well as the Board of Trustees, (BoT), of our party highlighting the overbearing, unbecoming and destructive attitudes of Senator Anyanwu which clearly are nothing but anti-party activities aimed at destroying Imo PDP for his paymasters, the All Progressives Congress, APC and its leader, Governor Hope Uzodimma”, the letter noted.
Explaining the reason it brought the fresh allegations against Samdaddy, the group said, “For the purposes of clarity and true justification of our claims against Samuel Anyanwu as the personality at the centre of all the evils besieging our great party in Imo State, we are compelled to, once again, bring to the fore, the litany of the Senator’s destructive inclinations which have brought division, despair and outright depression to the entire PDP family in Imo”.
The Critical Stakeholders thus hammered home its grievances against its governorship candidate. According to it, “Certainly, what is happening in Imo State chapter of the PDP is excruciatingly painful even as it is an embarrassment to all the supporters of our once united party in the state.
“It is a well known fact that Anyanwu notoriously worked against the PDP in the 2019 governorship election even when it was obvious that Rt Hon Emeka Ihedioha roundly, cleanly and effectively defeated him at the primary election. Yet, as a mole and one working for the then incumbent governor , Owelle Rochas Okorocha, he kept both Ihedioha and PDP unreasonably busy in the court and continued to distract the governorship candidate and the party despite interventions and pleas from worthy Imo leaders. When he lost the case in the High and Appeal courts, he proceeded to the Supreme Court just for the ruthless reasons of disturbing, distracting and destroying Ihedioha and the party.
“Peeved and almost devastated, the Imo PDP, in a commendable move to save the party from Samdaddy’s destructive mission, after due and wide consultations, and citing the party’s constitution (2017 as Amended), pointed out his various gross misconducts and appropriately expelled him from the party due to anti-party activities in the 2019 elections”.
The spokesperson of the Imo PDP Critical Stakeholders revealed that in spite of Samdaddy’s insanities against the party, he was forgiven and supported for his dream of being the national secretary of the party which he won but regretted that he committed worse crimes thereafter.
As Akunnakwe put it in the release, “Imo PDP and the leader of the party, Rt Hon Emeka Ihedioha forgave him and supported his election as the National Secretary of the party.
“Sadly and regrettably, the first thank you gift from Samdaddy for all the support given to him before, during and after his emergence was to mindlessly sow the seed of division and betrayal in the party. By so doing, he consciously brought the centra-fugal layers of resentment – a direct product of division – to bear on the 2022 PDP Primaries in the state”.
Giving more insights into Samdaddy’s anti party activities, the PDP reform group noted as follows: “To effectively carry out his divisive intentions of tearing the party into shreds so as to render it incapacitated and worthless, Senator Anyanwu committed a most horrendous crime against the party by seizing most of the critical and sensitive materials as well as the result sheets of some Federal Constituencies because he felt that those delegates from there were not willing to do his biding. This was the action by Anyanwu that started real division in the party in 2022 and it has gone worse ever since.
“It’s on record that for years no one has ever heard about how the PDP secretariat at Okigwe Road, Owerri usually paid its rent or how the workers’ salaries were handled. His Excellency Rt Hon Emeka Ihedioha took it upon himself for years to take care of these responsibilities right from 2015 when he first ran for governorship election. The respective state party chairmen ( including the immediate past one, Barr. Charles Ezekwem) never bothered anyone because Ihedioha was handling it creditably.
“Just for once after becoming our candidate, Samdaddy couldn’t make it a priority for this all important statutory responsibility to be carried out until it became a public issue and an embarrassment to the party. Yet now, the staff of the secretariat are being owed months of salary arrears and worse of all with threats of sack for mustering courage to demand for their hard earned payments”.
It added, “Without doubts, it is a well known fact that Senator Anyanwu is not running for election or else how would anyone explain that a man who is the governorship candidate of the PDP is still holding on tenaciously to his position as the National Secretary of the party. These are two extremely busy and demanding positions that one cannot handle concurrently. It is like day and night – one must give way for the other, because day and night cannot function at the same time, else there will be confusion.
To apparently demonstrate the magnitude and exact damage Samdaddy has tragically brought upon the Imo PDP, it must be pointed out, whole and entire, that all our members who have been leaving the party in droves since his emergence as our candidate for the November 11 election, have been pointing fingers at him as their sole reason of quiting.
“Unarguably, the most revealing, and indeed, the most agonizing, is that all of our seven SWC members who resigned recently blamed Senator Anyanwu as the main factor of their resignation. They made it abundantly clear that he maliciously fought against them thereby making their job not just hard but stressful. When he could not get them to do his selfish biddings, he kept insulting them with the never ending threats of dissolution of the present Engineer Charles Ugwu led – executive. Just as he did in the 2018 governorship primary election, he took his dubious and selfish fight against the serving executive members up to the Supreme Court. Of course, we have it on good authority that he was hired by opponents of PDP for those hatchet jobs. One man (Ihedioha), carried this whole burden up to the Supreme Court to make sure that PDP remains a party to beat in Imo”.
Akunnakwe and his allies in the Critical Stakeholders alleged that “Just to ensure that he scatters Orlu Zone PDP Family, Senator Anyanwu contracted and conspired with Rt. Hon. Jones Onyereri for this evil plot. It is imperative that Onyereri is reminded that he is only a deputy governorship candidate of the party and so does not qualify to lay claim as the leader of the party in Imo West Senatorial District. The leader of PDP in Orlu Zone is His Excellency, Chief Achike Udenwa, the first PDP governor of our state and currently a member of the Board of Trustees (BoT) of our party . His deputy, and in the line of leadership ranking, is His Excellency, Gerald Irona, erstwhile deputy governor. This is followed by the two PDP House of Reps members from Orlu Zone. Onyereri as a deputy governorship candidate does not yet have the mandate of the people and so does not qualify as the leader of Orlu Zone over and above the two leaders mentioned above.
“Onyereri is a former member of the House of Representatives for Njaba-Isu-Nwangele-Nkwerre Federal Constituency . The present occupant of that seat is Rt. Hon. Ozuruigbo. Onyereri should not only consult him but defer to him in his Federal Constituency. You can reasonably see and agree that Onyereri was grotesquely wrong, going to the Federal Constituencies of the leader and deputy leader in Orlu Zone to all alone pick persons to replace the recently-resigned officers without the consent of these Orlu leaders, and the Orlu Zonal Executive Committee or the LGA Executive Committee from this zone”.
The group said, “Conclusively and for emphasis sake, let us state it very clearly, once more here – it has been established that Senator Anyanwu is not running for any election but interested in three disturbing matters to wit: number one; securing and having the structure of the party for selfish reasons. Number two, he also aims to destroy the party to ingratiate himself to those guiding him. And number three, Senator Anyanwu wants to hold on to the battered PDP platform in order to be relevant in the post-2023 affairs”.
The group lamented that “Samdaddy’s continued anti-party activities against PDP are legendary. They are aberrations to what genuine party politics are all about and must be stopped, lest they destroy our great party in Imo State beyond redemption.
“His worst crime to the party is his shameless betrayal and sordid sabotage since 2015 General Elections whereupon he has yet to deliver his boot, ward and LGA to PDP. In 2015, after he won his senatorial election on the wings of PDP, two weeks later, Anyanwu committed the most unpardonable electoral sabotage ever witnessed in the history of Nigerian politics: he abandoned PDP to its fate and rather worked for APC consequent which he ensured PDP lost his boot, ward and Ikeduru LGA and that was how we lost the governorship and state house of assembly elections. He was never remorseful but instead was seen openly celebrating and clinging glasses with the opposition.
“The same scenario repeated in the 2019 General Elections but the most reprehensible was recorded in the last 2023 General Elections where Samdaddy, even as a sitting National Secretary of PDP, again, abysmally, failed in his boot, ward and Local Government Area. This is unfathomable but it is not a mystery to us because Anyanwu has one mission, one vision and one goal very dear to his heart: to destroy Imo PDP”!!!
