By Charles Igbo
A former Ag. Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, Ibim Semenitari, has defected to the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.
Semenitari a close political ally of the immediate past Transportation Minister, Rotimi Amaechi, was Amaechi’s Commissioner for Information when he was Governor. It was, also, Amaechi who influenced her appointment to the high profile NDDC top job. She had, during the crisis that engulfed the PDP in the months leading to the 2015 General elections, decamped to the All Progressives Congress, APC, with Amaechi.
But on July, 10, 2022, after Amaechi lost the APC Presidential ticket to Bola Tinubu, Semenitari resigned from the APC alongside a couple of other Amaechi’s allies.
She had been off the radar since her resignation from the Party. But on Saturday, November 5, 2022, the former NDDC boss took the bold step, decamped to the PDP, and pledged loyalty to the Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike.
Asked why PDP, Semenitari whose father, Gabriel Tobby, was the Deputy Governor of the State under then Governor Peter Odili, PDP, said she only returned to base.She reminded that her first political step was in the PDP, and that she only followed her former boss to the APC when the PDP structure was taken away from him during the Goodluck Jonathan Presidency.
She was received to the party in her Okrika Local Government Area by the Council Chairman, Akuro Tobin, a former Commissioner in the State, and other PDP chieftains.
Semenitari: “My first political home was the PDP. I moved with my former boss (Amaechi) who was the leader of the PDP in Rivers State when the structure was taken away from him.
“Every politics must benefit the people. I left the APC for personal reasons. I could not provide for my teeming supporters and those who saw reason to belong to the APC because of me.
“Now that an Opobo son (Sim Fubara) is contesting for the Governor of Rivers State on the platform of the PDP, we all must support him to win the election in 2023.
“We all must place ourselves in a position to speak for our people. I need to find a position to speak for my teeming supporters and the good people of Opobo Kingdom.
“This is my only attraction to the PDP and nothing more.”
Her former boss, Amaechi, has been quiet since after Tinubu roundly beat him to the APC Presidential ticket. He is one of the high profile APC members whose names were dropped from the Party’s Presidential Campaign Council.
