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From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, has declared that the ruling party would leverage on its victory in Imo State governorship poll as a launchpad to capture the remaining states in the South East geopolitical zone.
He spoke when he hosted the party’s Enugu governorship candidate and Minister of Science and Technology, Uche Geoffrey Nnaji at the national secretariat of the party in Abuja yesterday.
Commending the victory of the party, the former governor of Kano State declared that with Imo and Ebonyi already in the bag of the party, the leadership would concentrate all energies in capturing the remaining three – Enugu, Anambra and Abia.
He said: “We are celebrating our victory in Imo State with the governor going for a second term. We won the Imo State election in all the 27 local government areas and with half a million votes, about 540,000.
“So, we are going to use Imo State as liberation for the South East. Since we now already have Ebonyi and Imo states, we are eying to take over the remaining three states. We want to use Imo as a launchpad and we need your cooperation to succeed. Enugu is also a very important state for the APC,” he said.
In his opening remarks on the mission, the minister urged the chairman to help weed out Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) mole pretending to be members of APC in Enugu State. “We worked night and day when we took over the mantle of leadership in the state to bring APC to the people. We visited the nooks and crannies of the state. Sometimes, we began by 8am and retired at 3am. The earliest we returned to our homes was by 2am. With insecurity everywhere, we visited villages and were never afraid of anything or being attacked,” he said.
He lamented that the party was a shadow of itself in Enugu State with people who never worked or believed in the party parading themselves as APC stalwarts, while working for other political parties.
“A lot of people are APC in Abuja, and PDP or Labour Party (LP) in Enugu State as the case may be. We lost the state to tribal politics. Some who claim to be APC stalwarts, have their children in the PDP and the LP and worked against our party.
“Some of the so-called stalwarts campaigned publicly against the party but today, they are enjoying the goodies from the party’s victory.
“We are here because we want to solicit your support to make our party strong in the state and end the era of ‘monkey dey work, baboon dey chop’ syndrome. He who did not go to war should not share from the spoils of war,” he quipped.
On the outcome of the governorship polls in Imo State, Nnaji commended the national chairman and members of the party’s NWC for a job well done. “Your support made it possible for us to use a sledge hammer to kill flies in the last gubernatorial elections in Imo State. We thought it was a fight between two elephants, but in the end, we found out that there was no contest,” he chided.
