The Enugu State chapter of the All Progressives Congress, has decried the exclusion of the party from participating in the state local government elections schedule for Wednesday, February 23, 2022 by the state Independent Electoral Commission.
Addressing the disenfranchised candidates and other party faithful at the state secretariat on Sunday, the new state chairman of APC, Ugochukwu Agballah, vowed that the party would ensure that the election was cancelled if the electoral body went ahead with the elections without his party participated.
Agballah said that the state electoral body did not published list of the party’s candidates for the 17 council areas and 260 councillorship wards, which was forwarded to the ENSIEC on December 2021, according to the guidelines.
He said the exclusion of the party from participating in the council poll was a deliberate plot to disenfranchise the party faithful by refusing to publish its candidates.
“Enugu must rise for democracy to thrive. There is no democracy in Enugu state; it’s been a government of cronyism and elitism… On Wednesday (February 23) the local government election will not be held; if they go ahead, it will be an exercise in futility,” he declared.
Agballah announced that the legal team of the party had already filed a suit at the State High Court to void the election for unlawful exclusion, which he said was a breach of the Nigerian Constitution and the Electoral Act.
The APC chairman accused the ruling Peoples Democratic Party government in the state of colluding with some unscrupulous elements in the APC to manipulate ENSIEC in order to frustrate APC from participating in the council poll.
Agballah, who received his certificate of Returns from the APC national leadership on February 14, 2022, claimed that his emergence as the APC chairman in the state was causing fears within the ranks of the state government and the ruling party that he accused of having been in the practice of writing election results in favour of the ruling party where they give themselves 100 per cent victory in previous LG polls.
Copyright PUNCH.
