By Emmanuel Aziken, Political Editor
The sight of two prominent chieftains of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, fighting openly at the Owerri airport would have beheld the several onlookers at the airport on Wednesday, December 1.

The two caught fighting were Chief Olisa Metuh, the national vice-chairman (southeast) of the party and Chief Chris Uba, a member of the party’s Board of Trustees.  Metuh claimed he received a jab on the neck from Uba at the airport prompting him to respond to the attack from the one-time godfather of the Anambra State chapter of the PDP.

Both men, who confirmed the exchange of blows, unsurprisingly disagreed on who started the fight. Both men in separate accounts to reporters in Enugu blamed one another for sparking the conflict.

Surprisingly, the PDP officials exchanged their blows within the precincts of the Owerri airport an otherwise organised environment where urbanity is a given culture. It was equally surprising that the fighters did not do their act on an election day or during a PDP congress during which such brawls are common place.

Uba and Metuh are remarkably from Anambra State, a state which,  more than any other, has demonstrated the essence of political lawlessness.

Anambra  is perhaps the only state, since the advent of the fourth republic, where the PDP has not been able to hold a second congress since the first one that threw up the first set of party executives in 1998.

It would be recalled that one of the last organized meetings of the major stakeholders of the Anambra State chapter of the PDP held just before the gubernatorial elections of this year at the Shehu Musa Yar‘Adua Centre in Abuja ended in a riot during which furniture and fittings were destroyed.

Uba, it is also recalled, was the political godfather of the Anambra  PDP when a sitting governor  was abducted.

The brawl at the Owerri airport, sources said, is directly related to the political trends in Anambra  which has pitched Uba and Metuh at opposite sides. Metuh belongs to the new crop of political leadership in the southeast who do not owe obligation to the Uba family or to former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

The sources explained that the bad blood between both men worsened after Metuh failed to accord Uba the courtesy other senior party officers had given him in the past.

Metuh, as the highest party ranking officer in the southeast, has, in the recent past, deployed his office to erase the structures Chris Uba had built since 2002.

Relations reportedly deteriorated  further after Metuh was alleged to have used uncomplimentary language on Chris Uba’s senior brother, a presidential aide and a politician who made history as governor with the shortest tenure in Nigeria,  Andy, during a NEC meeting when Andy’s application for a waiver was discussed. An embarrassed Andy, it was reported, told his younger brother of his embarrassment.

Whether it was that embarrassment or not that caused the brawl is a matter that is now left for the police in Owerri to unravel.