Chief Chikwe Udensi, a governorship candidate in the All Progressive Grand Alliance’s (APGA) just-concluded primary election in Abia state, has said he has approached a Federal High Court to determine who is actually qualified to fly the party’s governorship flag for Abia in the upcoming general elections next year.
This comes as the chairman of the party’s Abia chapter, Rev. Augustine Ehiemere, claims that the party has yet to receive any formal petition from Chief Udensi or a court summons from the suit allegedly instituted by him or any other person, claiming that the primary was free, transparent, and credible as far as the party in Abia is concerned.
Both spoke during interactive sessions with journalists at various fora in Umuahia in response to the party’s parallel party primary held on June 29, 2022, at the Kolpin Society Conference Centre and the Villa Roy Hotel, both in Umuahia.
Udensi, who is also a security expert, had accused the state Working Committee of rigging the primary election, which resulted in Gregory University, Uturu, Chancellor Prof. Gregory Ibe being declared the winner, claiming that the organisers used phoney delegates.
“I want the court to determine the party’s authentic governorship candidate in the state within the 14-day window allowed by law to seek redress before the campaign begins,” Udensi said.
He said he left the accreditation venue for the venue where he held his own primary election, where he was also declared winner, after noticing that some members of the party’s State Working Committee had compromised and were no longer willing to follow the rules for the primary election.
“We left them because the delegates -list they were using was unfamiliar to us,” he says. I’m a founding member of the APGA, and we can’t abandon the home we’ve built for people who came on a petty political mission.”
“If they wanted to hold a primary election within the party, we have a process that they should have followed,” he says. Instead, they sent thugs, never-do-wells, and social misfits to act as delegates, to the point where they had to kidnap members of the three-man panel who had been sent from Abuja to a private location to sign the Congress document.
“To help reduce the level of desperation for financial benefits among party leaders during electioneering, it is necessary for party leadership to be handled by people with pedigree and sustainable means of livelihood.”
“There is no doubt in my mind that there is a conspiracy within our party.” Greed and selfishness are at the root of this plot. That is why I have been advocating for electoral reforms to begin with political parties, to ensure that those who lead political parties are decent people with decent means of livelihood and no criminal records.
“However, what do we have today?” says the narrator. From the wards to the state level, we have hoodlums in charge of political parties. People who will have an impact on the selection of candidates must be decent themselves.
“Today, anyone can be a ward chairman or the party’s Local Government chairman because there are no standards for who becomes what?”
“If we don’t set a standard that will attract decent people to run the party, we’ll end up with poor candidates.”
Despite its abundant human and material resources, Udensi expressed regret that Abia had remained the most underdeveloped state in the South-East. I want to save the state of Abia.
“If the NWC rejects their result, I believe it should accept mine.”
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Augustine Ehiemere, the APGA chairman in Abia state, told reporters in Umuahia on Thursday that there is no reason for any aspirant to go to court because the primary process that produced Prof. Ibe was clearly transparent.
As a result, the party’s boss urged Udensi and other aggrieved aspirants to join the party’s leadership and governorship candidate, “so that we can win the general elections together and liberate Abia state from many years of enslavement.”
There have been no roads or infrastructure in Abia state for many years under the PDP-led government, workers have not been paid on time, pensioners have been owed pensions for many years, and gratuity has been suspended since 2000.
He urged aspirants who were defeated in the primary election not to leave the party in protest.
