By TONY EDIKE, ENUGU
The battle for the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP governorship, Senatorial; State and National Assemblies tickets in Enugu State continued to heat up the political atmosphere in Enugu at the weekend as the two warring factions intensified strategies to outdo the other.

Governor Sullivan Chime and his supporters are confident that they would fly the party’s flag in the April general elections with the belief that ongoing legal  battle for the soul of the party and nomination for the various elective positions would end in their favour. Apart from the party’s tickets, the group is battling to ensure the recognition of its faction led by Engr. Vita Abba as the authentic executive of the party in the state.

On the other hand, the Caesar Alex Ogbonna led faction which is loyal to the former National Chairman of the party, Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo, is leaving nothing to chance in  ensuring  that its candidates for the various positions including Chief Engr. Anayo Onwuegbu are presented as the flag bearers.

But while Chime enjoys the backing of President Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP national leadership which forwarded his name and others on its list to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Onwuegbu and his group of aspirants are basking in the euphoria of the order granted by the Abuja Federal High Court presided by Justice Abdul Kafarati.

The court order directed the PDP and INEC (the defendants/respondents) to accept Onwuegbu and 38 other plaintiffs as the party’s candidates from Enugu State. It was indeed this court order that has delayed INEC’s recognition of Chime and the other candidates on his list and this has gone further to disrupt the display of the list of candidates cleared by the commission for various political parties in the state.

The INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner in Enugu, Dr. Josiah Uwazuruonye had on Monday displayed the list of candidates showing the particulars of twelve governorship candidates and their running mates. Among them were Governor Sullivan Chime and Sunday Onyebuchi as PDP candidates. Onwuegbu’s name was missing on the list and this triggered off strong protests by Onwuegbu and the candidates on his list.

They threatened to commence contempt proceedings against the INEC Chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega for displaying Chime’s nomination forms at the commission’s office in Enugu contrary to the orders of the court. They mounted pressure on INEC to replace their own names on the notice board but the request was turned down. Rather than replacing Chime’s name with Onwuegbu’s,  the commission removed the names of all the governorship candidates from the board five hours after the display.

The State Electoral Commissioner, Dr. Uwazuruonye was to explain Tuesday morning that he had a directive from the commission’s headquarters at Abuja that the list of candidates for the state was sent in error and should be immediately withdrawn pending further directives which, he said, would depend largely on the outcome of the pending court cases.

Uwazuruonye said:  “I got a call from the National Commissioner in charge of legal matters, Mr.  Philip Umeadi who told me that the list of Enugu State was sent in error and that we are supposed not to have even displayed it in the first place because of the cases going on in courts.  He asked me to arrange for the withdrawal of the list and I accordingly directed the officer in-charge of legal matters to withdraw it immediately.”

In a swift reaction to the development Governor Sullivan Chime said he was not perturbed at all as he was confident of emerging the flag bearer of the party when the issue must have been sorted out in the court. The governor’s reaction which came through his Campaign Organization’s Director of Media and Commissioner for Information, Culture and Tourism, Mr. Chuks Ugwoke, reads:

“We have heard such unconfirmed report about withdrawal of the governor’s name but if it is true, then it is, perhaps, in strict compliance with due process and full observance of the rule of law. It does not vitiate the irreducible fact that Governor  Sullivan Chime was duly nominated by PDP and had since filled and returned his nomination form to INEC. We’re quite certain that in the fullness of time, other legal issues will be sorted out and we shall all be witnesses to the final verdict and the corresponding commencement of other electoral activities.”

The  Media Director of Onwuegbu’s campaign organistion, Mr. Jeff Mba,  speaking on the development, commended INEC for promptly responding to their demand but he queried why the commission could not go further to display Onwuegbu’s name as ordered by the court.  He however asked the commission to implement the court order to the fullest to ensure that justice was done to his principal.

However, by press time Thursday, the list of candidates removed from the commission’s notice board had not been re-displayed while those sent to the various constituencies which were not displayed before the directive to withdraw them, had been returned to Enugu amidst complaints from candidates of other political parties.  The opposition candidates argued that since there was no legal encumbrances to their nominations, INEC ought to have displayed their names like their counterparts in other states.

As tension heightened within the PDP, the two warring parties were locked in another round of scheming and maneuvering on Wednesday and Thursday to ensure that the PDP flags were handed over to their own candidates.

To set the ball rolling was the Alex Ogbonna group which addressed a news conference in Abuja demanding that President Goodluck Jonathan and the national leaders of the party billed to attend Friday’s rally of the part for the South East zone, should hand over the PDP gubernatorial flag to Onwuegbu whom they said is the authentic candidate of the party.

In a counter move, the Sullivan Chime faction condemned the call on President Goodluck Jonathan by the Ogbonna faction to obey the rule of law and handover the party’s governorship flag to Onwuegbu.  The group’s statement signed by the factional Chairman, Engr. Vita Abba, said  Governor Chime  remains the party’s flag bearer and should be given the flag, just as he asked the president to ignore the call by Ogbonna faction.

The governor’s faction said that the issue of handing over the party’s flag “is purely an internal affair of the PDP and moreover there is no court order restraining the party from handing over same to its candidate in Enugu State”, adding that “there is one PDP Gubernatorial Candidate in Enugu State in the person of Governor Sullivan Chime.”