All Progressive Congress (APC) in Imo State is currently enmeshed in a crisis over the outcome of the party’s primaries, which produced unidentified people as chairmanship and councillorship candidates.
Under the auspices of the forum of APC chairmanship and councillorship aspirants in Imo State, the group disclosed this while addressing newsmen in Owerri, the Imo State capital. The group has representatives across the three zones in the state.
Coordinator of the forum and chairmanship aspirant, Barr Lucky Ikwubuo, popularly known as “Onye Eze”, expressed annoyance that before the sale of nomination and expression of interest forms, the party in a stakeholders’ meeting held at the party’s secretariat along Okigwe Road told aspirants to commence the purchase of forms ahead of a peaceful, fair and credible primary election.
Barr Ikwubuo regretted that after their colleagues had picked the forms with over N3 million and commenced consultations across wards in their respective LGAs, Governor Hope Uzodinma and the party’s chairman, Macdonald Ebere, informed them that the party would adopt a consensus arrangement.
He maintained that while his colleagues were prepared and awaited a primary election, a list of selected chairmanship and councillorship candidates emerged from nowhere without a primary election.
According to him, Governor Uzodima addressed them and directed that their money be refunded without further delay. He said that accepting to refund the money used for the purchase of the forms indicated that there was no primary election contrary to both the Electoral Act and the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended.
An APC chieftain contacted to respond to the allegation said on conduction of anonymity, “The situation is very bad and does not show that our party believes in democracy. If you ask people willing to represent their LGAs and Wards to pay a certain amount of money for forms, what that means is that you are prepared to conduct a credible primary election for winners to emerge amongst them. But compiling names of friends, relations, concubines, in-laws, and girls secretly and forwarding them to the ISIEC as candidates of our party is the most disheartening thing. This act should be condemned. As a leader, I can’t condone evil; what the governor and the APC chairman did is a broad day scam to the aspirants and what they should do urgently to remedy the situation is to refund them without further delay.”
Barr Ikwubuo further threatened that his colleagues had concluded all arrangements to embark on a two-day protest on the streets of Owerri to demonstrate against the scamming of their hard earned money by both Governor Uzodima and Ebere if their money was not refunded within 48 hours.
