Labour Party’s governorship candidate in Enugu State, Hon. Chijioke Edeoga, has disclosed why he left the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), as not being out of desperation, but to respond to the calls by the people of the state to serve.

He was reacting to allegations that he reneged on the peace pact and accord he signed with 17 other governorship aspirants of the PDP ahead of the guber primary to support whoever emerged victorious in the primary election.

Edeoga, who served as two-term commissioner under the administration of Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi before venturing into the 2023 guber race, declared that he had no apology for ditching the ruling party to contest on the Labour Party platform.

“We are in a precarious and challenging time in Enugu State and Nigeria. The crisis of this time does not allow for any kind of hesitation because the fortunes of our children are clearly in doubt. 

“The fact of the mis-governance now and in the past years has become obvious and the consequences have combined to the extent that all men of goodwill must act. 

“So, it is not desperation of ambition. It is a call; it is a response to the urgent demands of these times.

“There is a domestic crisis; absolute lack of employment opportunities for the youths of Enugu State and Nigeria in general; no prospect of employment; not one single sustainable employment outfit has been created in Enugu State in the past seven years. The anger of our youths is boiling over.

“There is insecurity everywhere and even our farmers cannot go to the farms again. 

“The villages are occupied by terrorists; 14 villages in my home town in Mgbuji are presently occupied by terrorists with beautiful names.

“They kill, they rape and they maim and people keep asking questions about what we are doing. 

“Things that the government should do in the daily cost of living are not done and there is no doubt that people who mean well, who see service as what it ought to be must rise to the demands of these times. The times are precarious.

“My desire is a response to the multifarious cries that I have heard and these cries were there when I was running in the PDP,” Edeoga told newsmen in Enugu.

On the allegation that he dumped the PDP for LP out of desperation and disobedience to the decision of the party leaders and stakeholders on consensus, Edeoga said: “When you say I’m not being a man of my own words and you talk about an MoU that you have not seen you are being judgmental. 

“You have not read that MoU. The MoU speaks specifically about not going to court. Its intentions were that the outcome of that primary should not be challenged in court and that we should conduct ourselves in a democratic manner. 

“So, nowhere in the MoU did it intend to circumscribe anyone’s democratic rights to aspire.

“The MoU was a matter that was agreed by some aspirants in the PDP family and it was within a contest in the firm belief that the primary itself will be conducted according to democratic norms and its outcome will be acceptable to the majority of Enugu State people.

“If the outcome of that primary, which the PDP, which was before then the dominant party in Enugu State conducted was acceptable to everybody, the loud and ominous silence that greeted its outcome wouldn’t have happened.

“The popularity that Labour Party has garnered and continued to gain, especially since I became a candidate wouldn’t have been strong. It won’t be strong if the outcome of PDP primary was in consonance with the wishes of the majority of Enugu State people because, ideally, delegates should carry out the express wishes of the people they represent.

“Those delegates of the PDP should represent the dominant opinion of Enugu people which means that if another party had come, it would have been received with lukewarm support, but that is not the case in Enugu State.

“My entry into the Labour Party in addition to Peter Obi’s previous entry has galvanized Enugu State in such a manner that has never been before. 

“So, it shows you that there is a dissonance, that there is disconnect between the outcome of that primary and people of Enugu State.”

Giving further reasons why the PDP at the national level could no longer enjoy the support of the electorate in the state and the south east, Edeoga said: “I said sometime that as at the time we did our primary, the PDP at the national level had not conducted its primary for the presidential election and the president and vice presidential candidates had not emerged. 

“For the first time in several years, the legitimate expectations of the Southeast that the PDP will be a platform where they can realize their aspiration was dashed by the choice of another Northerner to replace an outgoing Northerner; the clear marginalization of the Southeast in the choice of the vce president. 

“It is one of the things that made me make up my mind against the PDP in addition to other things. I decided not to continue after I left the PDP, but I don’t own myself.

“There are other people following me whose insistence was that I should adopt a platform and that any platform I adopted, they will follow me so that the battle to save Enugu State can begin. 

“There is no desperation and there is no human being in the world that cannot change his mind. 

“It is only a stone that does not change its mind and it will be cast to the sea when the need arises; it is only a tree that does not move in case of emergency and the tree will bend. So, I have no apology for stepping out again on another platform.

“I have done nothing that is abhorrent; I have done nothing that is abnormal. I have done the right thing. 

“The fight that I have received from the PDP shows me that I have done the right thing, that I am hitting the right ball and we are resolved, we are determined to go. 

“Changing one’s mind is not a sin and I will change again if occasion demands for the good reason and the right direction.“