OBI, APGA RAISE DUST OVER UBAH’S CAMPAIGN

All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) has advised people who want to extract money from wealthy business man and governorship candidate of Labour Party (LP), Patrick Ifeanyi Ubah, to stop peddling ‘naked lies’ just to achieve their aim.
The reaction came barely two days after Ubah launched his campaign in Onitsha, during which one man appeared to the public claiming to be the traditional ruler of Agulu, Governor Peter Obi’s home town, while others, including one Christian Okpokwasili, claimed he was the chairman of Dunukofia local government chapter of APGA, among others.
Both Obi and Dunukofia chapter chairman of APGA, Silvanus Igbokwe, reacted at different fora at the weekend, lamenting that some people want to turn Anambra into an article of merchandise.
Obi said in a public function that if he had not watched the campaign lunch live in the television, he would have been misled by people who called him, believing that the man who paraded himself in the rally was his traditional ruler.
“Look at my traditional ruler here, many of you know him”, Obi said at the occasion.
“He is not the one that I saw as my town’s ruler on television at the Labour Party rally”, he said.
Also reacting, Igbokwe said Okpokwasili, who claimed to be his local government chairman, was removed in 2009 following alleged misappropriation of party fund. He was finally expelled from the party in 2011 when he contested the House of Assembly seat for Dunukofia state constituency on the platform of All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP).
Igbokwe said that following the crisis that rocked APGA recently, Okpokwasili began to divide the party by holding meetings with members who were aggrieved.
Now that the crisis has been resolved, he said, he has no choice than to go his separate way, which led him to Labour Party, where he believed he would make a lot of money.
Describing Okpokwasili as a political contractor, he regretted that despite the fact that APGA empowered him, he had failed to show loyalty to the party.
Instead, he rebranded the official vehicle given to him by the party, used it for his campaign in 2011 and has been jumping from one political party to the other.
He said that Okpokwasili did not take any party supporters from Dunukofia to LP as he claimed during the rally, saying if he had, they must be those who have one problem or the other in APGA.
But, Igbokwe said Dunukofia local government is not for sale and advised the people to stop seeing their local government, as an article of trade, which wealthy men can buy and sell at will.
He said that the local government does not believe in godfathers and those who think they can play godfatherism will be disappointed.
Source: Daily Independent