…Describe Ward, LG Congresses As Charades
The crisis trailing the conduct of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Wards and Local Government Congresses got messier following the dismissal of the recent endorsement of the incumbent state Chairman of the party, Chief Basil Ejidike, by other candidates for the position.
New Telegraph recalls that on Thursday, the twenty-one Local Government Chairmen of the party, led by Chief Frank Ndibe, had endorsed the candidacy of Basil Ejidike sighting the decision of the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party that states can go for consensus candidates in the interest of peace in the party.
Ndibe’s faction had also boasted that with the twenty-one Local Government Chairmen of the party throwing their weight behind Ejidike, other aspirants stand no chance of winning.
But according to one of the candidates for Chairman of APC, Chief Peter Nweadozie, what happened in the last local government and ward Congresses was a charade, adding that the endorsement of Ejidike was a ploy by those hand-picked local government Chairmen to compensate him for mentoring their respective ambitions.
Nweadozie, who spoke through his Director General of the Campaign Organization Chief Nestor Okoro, contended that the Ndibe-led group are merely trying to create a crisis in the party, adding that there was no semblance of internal democracy within the party during the two congresses, and that their endorsement holds no water.
“We have it on record the voice note of Frank Ndibe where he was mobilising his co-travellers to raise funds for the endorsement of Basil Ejidike, and in the same voice note, he confirmed that their forms were paid for by their benefactors, which in a normal state they would have spent more, and that is the genesis of that endorsement”
Nweadozie also dismissed claims that the National Working Committee of the APC had ordered consensus candidates, contending that there was never a time the body announced that states should go for a consensus.
“We all have the timetable and guidelines of our party concerning the conduct of the three Congresses, and the issue of consensus was never stamped as the only process of electing our office holders ”
“What these people are doing is to create a kind of impression that the normal congresses where people vote and are voted for don’t exist, and they are using all manner of name-dropping to cow faithful party members into submitting to their plot to impose Ejidike on the APC in Anambra state”, he stated.
Efforts to contact the National leadership of the party proved abortive ahead of the March 3rd state Congress in Awka, Anambra State capital.
