By Chukwunonye Okereke
Governor Peter Ndubuisi Mbah has turned politics in Enugu State into a theatre of demolition. Not the demolition of poverty. Not the demolition of unemployment. Not even the demolition of infrastructural decay. No. His demolition targets are always the people, their livelihoods, their institutions, and now, their political platforms.
In less than three years, Mbah has earned a reputation not as a builder but as a usurper-in-chief — a man whose every survival instinct is tied to wrecking what others laboured to build.
Without PDP, there would be no Peter Mbah in Lion Building. It was PDP’s structure, battered but still breathing, that dragged him across the finish line in 2023. It was PDP’s loyalists — not technocrats or “renewal” propagandists — that fought his election battles in every polling unit.
Yet once he wore the crown, Mbah treated the PDP like garbage. He starved it of recognition, stripped it of relevance, and reduced the once-mighty party into a husk. The PDP in Enugu today is not a ruling party; it is a demolished party. Mbah is not its leader; he is its undertaker.
This is not leadership. This is betrayal.
Ask the traders of Afor Awkunanaw, Holy Ghost or Ogige market in Nsukka. Ask the women whose daily bread depended on stalls that vanished overnight under Mbah’s bulldozers. What they will tell you is simple: Mbah did not renew anything; he wrecked everything.
Instead of consulting, he confiscates. Instead of compensating, he intimidates. Instead of empowering, he uproots. His business-unusual agenda is a smokescreen for ruthless dispossession. And like a man drunk on conquest, he mistakes force for vision.
The so-called Smart Green Schools project is another mask for usurpation. Communities woke up to find their fields, existing schools, and heritage swallowed in the name of “smartness.” What was built before must be torn down — not because it is unfit, but because Mbah craves monuments of self-glorification.
In Enugu today, children lose classrooms while contractors cash in. That is not smart governance; it is reckless showmanship.
Having dismantled PDP beyond recognition, Mbah now casts his eyes on APC. The same APC that long-suffering men and women in Enugu rebuilt from scratch, stone by stone, election after election. The same APC that Hon Minister Chief Uche Nnaji, Hon Chief Ugo Agballah built from scratch after moles like Dr Ben Nwoye et al were dispensed with, that survived mockery, exclusion, and starvation in opposition years.
Mbah never raised a finger when the APC was bleeding. He never lifted a stone when the APC was building. Yet today, he schemes to gate-crash into APC, not to serve, not to contribute, but to hijack its structure as a vehicle for his second term but it is unfortunate that it is going to be difficult for him where you have APC leaders Like Chief Sunday Umeha member representing Udi/ Ezeagu Federal Constituency in the federal house of Representatives, Hon Chima Atu. member representing Enugu North/South in the House of Representatives, and Prof Nnamchi representing the good people of Isiuzo/Enugu East in the same House of Representatives.
Leaders like Chief Peter Okonkwo (Ohamadike) and the former Deputy gubernatorial candidate of APC, Chief Ogara ( IYI), within the Enugu North senatorial zone.
It is the height of insult. It is like burning down your family’s house and then showing up at your neighbour’s door to claim their home as your inheritance. APC at the National should be wary of such a character that has excess baggage and that cannot deliver an ordinary bye-election in Enugu South Local Government, an urban ward local government, and in a ward that is at the heart of the city.
The Governor’s record of constant usurpation speaks for itself:
He usurped Edeoga’s mandate at the ballot.
He usurped traders’ markets for his “parks.”
He usurped community schools for his “smart” project.
He usurped PDP’s structure, leaving it in ruins.
And now, he plots to usurp the APC, a party he never built.
This is not governance. This is political banditry dressed in designer suits.
If APC allows this demolition expert to sneak in and seize its structure, then the party would have betrayed its own loyal foot soldiers. The people who carried APC through lean years will be spat upon if Mbah, the usurper of PDP, is allowed to usurp APC for 2027.
APC must ask itself: are we a party of sacrifice and loyalty, or a hotel for desperate defectors?
I know that the President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is a dyed-in-the-wool party man who respects party democracy, and the National Chairman of APC operates through organised structured leadership in APC, where order is always followed, will not want to destroy the Enugu chapter of the party.
The Mbah engagement is not value addition because he does not work with any political party, even his now defunct party, PDP, since he has never been a party man, and he won’t learn and cannot learn to be in the next couple of months.
He is certainly not coming to add any benefit to APC aside from trying to appropriate from the efforts of others.
What exactly is he looking for in APC if not to have a smooth sail to power the second time?
PDP loyalists will remember Mbah as the man who destroyed the house that made him. Traders will remember him as the governor who bulldozed their bread and butter. Communities will remember him as the demolisher of schools and fields. And APC members would not want to be another demolition statistic.
A gate-crasher should not be allowed to use the party and discard it like yesterday’s debris.
The leadership of the party at the National and the South East zone, especially our leader, the Governor General, His Excellency Chief Hope Uzodinma, knows the sacrifices that APC leaders have made in solidifying the fortunes of APC in Enugu. Peter Mbah may succeed in political gymnastics, but he cannot escape history’s verdict. And that verdict is already forming: Peter Ndubuisi Mbah — the Usurper of Enugu State.
*Chukwunonye Okereke is a Public Affairs Analyst and APC Political Strategist
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