Publicity Secretary of Edo PDP Caretaker Committee, Chris Nehikhare, said on Thursday in Benin City that those claimed to have defected were not local government chairmen but impostors.

According to Nehikhare, those who defected are impostors because all duly elected chairmen under PDP are still PDP members.

A statement by the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Mr Fred Itua said on Wednesday that 17 out of the 18 local government chairmen had defected from PDP to APC.

The statement also quoted Gov. Monday Okpebholo as predicting that President Bola Tinubu would win the 2027 election with a landslide.

However, Nehikhare dismissed the defection claim as misleading and clarified that no PDP chairman had defected, adding that all PDP chairmen were still with the PDP.

Nehikhare criticized report as unfortunate, stating that it was an attempt to deceive the public and maintain control within the party.

He said, “To set the record straight, contrary to the misleading claim made in the statement by the governor’s Chief Press Secretary, no single chairman of the PDP has decamped.

“All duly elected local government chairmen under the PDP in Edo are fully intact. See attached photo.

“The people whom they referred to as ‘chairmen’ in the press statement are the illegal appointees whom they are trying to impose on the various local government areas.

” it is quite unfortunate that the situation has degenerated into the point where APC assemble impostors while trying to assure the president and their party leadership that they are in control.

“Whoever they are trying to deceive or impress should be wary as there have been no political gains as was incorrectly portrayed in the misleading press statement.

“What happened in the festival hall of the Edo State Government House, can at best, be described as content creation for the viewing pleasure of the general public,” Nehikhare said. (NAN)

Abubakar, in a statement he issued on Tuesday in Abuja, also described it as a “political manipulation and action taken in bad faith”.

He alleged that anyone paying attention to the unfolding crisis knew that President Bola Tinubu had vested interest in the state.

Abubakar decried the calculated negligence in preventing the escalation tension in Rivers.

He said that Tinubu should have ended the condemnable destruction of national infrastructure in the state.

H said that the Niger Delta had been thrown back into an era of violent unrest and instability — undoing the hard-won peace secured by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua.

“Years of progress have been recklessly erased in pursuit of selfish political calculations.

“Punishing the people of Rivers State just to serve the political gamesmanship between the governor and Tinubu’s enablers in the federal government is nothing less than an assault on democracy and must be condemned in the strongest terms,” he said.