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- Urges party leaders, members to stay focused
From George Onyejiuwa, Owerri
The Imo People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has dismissed the allegation by the National Secretary of the party, Senator Samuel Anyanwu, that the election intervention fund given to the party by the party’s presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, was misappropriated.
The party also said that it was not true that members of the party in the state had allegedly sabotaged candidates of the party during the February 25 National Assembly/Presidential polls.
Recall that the National Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Samuel Anyanwu had in a press statement on Monday allegedly attributed the woeful performance of the party in the February 25 presidential/ National Assembly polls in the state to sabotage by disgruntled members within the state party.
He also alleged that the primary objectives of these saboteurs during the just concluded Presidential and National Assembly elections were to starve the party and its members of funds earlier approved and released as election intervention funds.
He also said all entreaties, appeals and convictions to release the funds approved to appropriate authorities in line with the national template to enable them to deliver candidates of the party were flagrantly ignored.
In a statement on Wednesday by Mr Collins Opuruzor, Publicity Secretary, read in parts: “For the avoidance of doubt, Senator Anyanwu was in attendance during the last stakeholders meeting of the Party on Thursday, February 23rd, 2023 where issues of appropriation of resources and disbursement thereof for the prosecution of the Presidential and National Assembly elections in the state were agreed upon. The framework adopted by stakeholders was handed over to the Finance Department of the Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) for implementation.
“In line with this framework, the logistics for the elections in each Local Government Area was given to a team of stakeholders from that LGA, which included the Apex Leader of the LGA, the Chairman of the Party in the LGA, the Chairman of the Campaign Council in the LGA, the Candidates from the LGA, a national, zonal and state officer of the party from the LGA and other Party stakeholders from the LGA. To this day, the Party has never received any complaint of any sort of deviation from the generally-agreed framework. One begins to wonder what could have informed the outburst from the National Secretary.
“If there is anything Imo PDP finds really troubling, it is the fact that our presidential candidate scored only ten (10) votes at Obodo Central School in Amaimo, Ikeduru LGA, which is the polling unit of our National Secretary. This is extremely difficult to explain.
“It is also worrisome that despite the hues and cries that have trailed the elections in Imo State, our National Secretary has been most unwilling to lend his voice to the agitations by Imo PDP for the electoral process in Imo to be sanitized and the culprits in the February 25th electoral fraud be brought to book. We had expected the National Secretary to deploy his strategic position to draw attention to some of the indefensible electoral malpractices in the state.
“For instance, our victory in Nkwerre/Isu/Njaba/Nwangele Federal Constituency is being sat upon by Imo’s rampaging petty dictator in cahoots with his corrupt enablers within INEC. Our senatorial victory in Imo North was also glaringly truncated. In areas where elections were never held because of insecurity, results were written for the APC.”
“For Imo East senatorial district, where our Party was coasting to victory, results were rewritten and swapped in Owerri Municipal just to halt our victory. Worse still, over fifty polling units in Mbaitoli and Owerri West were excluded from the final collation. For Orlu, Orsu and Oru East, the incumbent APC took advantage of the insecurity in the areas and diverted election materials and wrote results for themselves. These issues are fundamental, as they touch on the very integrity of our electoral process.
“We, therefore, call on our National Secretary to join hands with us in our clamour for justice in these cases. Turning around at this point to level allegations of sabotage and misappropriation on Party leaders in Imo is a disservice to the Party, which obviously sabotages our efforts to remain united so as to spiritedly fight for the retrieval of all mandates brazenly stolen from us by the unelectable APC.”
