Uduaghan’s defection is a big win for APC and bad news for PDP

His defection is of course very political and self serving. Uduaghan intends to represent the people of Delta South in the senate from 2019. This defection is another example of a heavyweight politician putting his personal goals before that of the people, forget whatever reason he just gave for switching camps.

Like every other politician who recently defected from one camp to the other, there's nothing altruistic about what Uduaghan just did.

But it also shows that the APC, which embarrassingly but predictably lost the South-South and Southeast geopolitical zones to the PDP in 2015, is gradually making inroads into a region of the country where it is most despised; and gradually chipping at the opposition's base.

Last weekend, the last PDP senator in Rivers State made the switch to the APC. At the time of writing this piece, all senators representing Rivers in the upper legislative chamber, have become card carrying members of the APC.

The APC can also point to the capture of Senator Godswill Akpabio in Akwa Ibom, as a decent piece of transfer business this political window. Akpabio is arguably the most formidable politician in his State, warts and all.

However, the grassroot often answers to the all-powerful state governor who decides how patronage is dispensed across local governments and councils. No governor in the South-South has defected from the PDP and the South-South states of Cross River, Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Bayelsa and Delta are still under the control of the PDP. This is where the APC comes up short and where its moves to annex the South-South will meet a brick wall.

In the ideology and value deficit brand of politics that Nigeria runs, Uduaghan’s defectionwill be sweet music to the ears of the APC nonetheless, even though he arrives the camp of the governing party with a stench. Uduaghan owes his rise in politics to Chief James Ibori, the money-bag godfather who had to serve jail time in the UK for stealing Delta dry during his stint as governor. Uduaghan still answers to Ibori and he probably had Ibori’s blessings to make the switch to the APC. The people of Delta regard Uduaghan as one of their worst governors in recent memory.

But the APC wouldn’t mind one bit. Uduaghan's defection essentially means the APC is carving its own pathway into the politics of Delta State and the South-South; and gradually weakening the PDP in its famed stronghold.

However, this defection is yet one more example that the PDP and APC are cut from the same political cloth and that amalapolitics still trumps ideology politics in our nascent democracy.