A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress in Abia state, Dr. Chinenye Nyerere Anyim, has reacted to the allegations that Dr. Uchechukwu Sampson Ogah connived with Governor Okezie Ikpeazu to scuttle the chances of the party in the 2019 governorship election in the state.
Ogah, APC gubernatorial candidate in Abia and now the current Minister of State for Mines and Steel Development, had been accused of colluding with Ikpeazu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to truncate the chances of the APC at the last guber polls.
A member of the APC Board of Trustees (BOT) in Abia, Prince B. B. Apugo, had alleged that Governor Ikpeazu personally purchased Ogah’s APC nomination forms, and ended up using him to betray the party in the governorship election.
“The truth remains that we had no candidate, the candidate that stood for us, Uche Ogah, was just a makeup. He did not come to contest election; in fact before the election, he called and told me that it would be better to leave the governorship seat for Okezie Ikpeazu.”
The allegations levelled against Ogah was subsequently collaborated by Evang. Darlington Onyinyechukwu Samspon, a cousin of the minister, who, in a Facebook post, asked the people not to be quick in defending “some things ignorantly”.
Uche Ogah, in a statement issued by his Senior Special Assistant on Special Duties, however denied the accusations levelled against him by Prince Apugo.
Reacting to the allegations against minister Uche Ogah in an exclusive interview with Igbere TV, Dr. Anyim described the development as unfortunate, and a mere political distraction for the APC in Abia state.
The former governorship candidate of the APC in Abia 2015 governorship election, who insisted that the development wasn’t new in the state’s political space, however, cautioned politicians against making “unguarded utterances”.
“I see all these things as distraction, and very unfortunate one for that matter. Speaking from experience, I am a stakeholder in Abia APC and a leader in all ramification. I was a member of a major committee of the party and the first national vice-chairman of the APC in Southeast and eventually the party’s gubernatorial candidate in the 2015 election.
“In those days, when we started the APC in Abia state, when we call for meetings, because of the turn-out, the interest and zeal people had for a change in the political equation in Abia state, it was like a wildfire for the government in power so they normally attacked us during our meetings until we started having mixed multitudes (of people from the other party) in our midst but we never stopped.
“I lost out in the 2015 governorship election in Abia, I didn’t win not because I did not do any campaign, my campaign was so robust to the grassroot than even the party that claim they won. But you see, in those days, treachery and betrayals or if you like call it ‘the enemies within’… There is no way I will be in my Ward and Polling Unit in Obingwa and at the same time, be in other Polling Units in the state. It is not possible because it is only God that is omnipresent.
“Our own party members who are supposed to be at the various polling units where the elections are conducted and results counted, you will not see them there. Inasmuch as we know that elections in Abia state, over the years, has been an issue of writing results and allocating results the way they want to do because they have the power but you still see find people after the elections to say all sort of things against the candidate of the party.
“I believe in my own way, if anybody disagrees with any member of the party, as a family, we should come together instead of washing our dirty linen in public. Accusations and counter-accusations exist everywhere even in other political parties. So to me, I don’t want to be distracted by such gossip as it will always come. Like I said, it is just like every other political distraction but I think at this level of our political development, we should be more matured and very careful with certain utterances,” Dr. Anyim added.
