Follow Us on Google
From Fred Itua, Abuja
Founding national chairman of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), Chekwas Okorie, on Friday, emerged presidential candidate of a faction of the party.
Okorie was declared winner of the primary election, a day after Peter Umeadi won the primary election conducted by the Victor Oye-led National Working Committee, NWC.
Okorie scored 471 votes to defeat his opponent, Freedom Okwuchukwu who polled 290 votes in a contest conducted by the Chief Edozie Njoku-ler NWC.
Addressing newsmen after his emergence, Okorie pledged to reposition the country in a manner that would make her development-driven.
He said: “Listen to all the aspirants and candidates that have been emerging including their political parties, none of them have brought the idea of restructuring which is a primary concern of majority of Nigerians.
“I am going to make the issue of restructuring, devolution of power, self determination of ethnic nationalities a cardinal principle of my campaign. I know some people will begin to copy.
“The truth is Nigeria is structured to fail and that is why it is failing. Nigeria is not structured to grow, expand or provide employment. You cannot shape Nigeria in the model of countries like China because our structure is disjointed and we are disunited.
“How can you deal with the issue of insecurity if we are yet to decentralize the command structure of the our police? Where on earth will a country as vast as Nigeria operate under one command structure?”
Speaking on his chances at the polls, the Presidential candidate asked: “Have you not seen an underdog win tournament? This is a massive movement. We are starting with a block vote of 15 million even before the election and every other thing we are doing is to increase that number.”
