Imo Stakeholders Urge Araraume, Others to Quit APC

A coalition of different groups - professionals, students, town unions, the clergy and others have called on a chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state, Senator Ifeanyi Godwin Araraume, to immediately look for another platform to contest the forthcoming governorship election, saying he and his huge followers would not get justice in the on-going efforts to resolve the current crisis in Imo APC.

The coalition, which met through representatives in the state capital weekend, said it was making the call because it no longer had confidence that the APC under the leadership of Adams Oshiomhole, was the credible platform through which the people of the state can bring about the type of governance they envisage come May 29 2019.

In a communiqué issued at the end of the meeting, the participants noted that the people of the state had become “completely disenchanted” with the party as a result of the “repressive and unresponsive” style of the administration of the current Imo State governor, Chief Rochas Okorocha.

The groups noted that the call on Senator Araraume to seek for another party was further informed by the fact that majority of the people of the state had long before now identified the former senator as possessing qualities that would enable him “recover and rebuild the state from the ruins it has been left in for close to eight years now”.

The spokesman of the coalition, Apostle Jonas Ihejirika, noted that they were worried that even if the senator secured the ticket of the APC to run for the election, he will be most unlikely to secure the mandate of the people because the party has been “completely demarketed” in the state by the state governor.

He listed some of the grievances of the people against the Okorocha Administration to include brazen impunity, which manifests mostly in the governor’s “utter disdain for the rule of law, high handedness/ insensitivity to the yearnings of the people, deceit and crass lack of transparency”.

Apostle Ihejirika further explained that even though at some point the people of the state were gearing towards returning the APC to power in 2019, owing to the fact that that some stakeholders were making some efforts to rebrand it, he said “recent developments within the party have thwarted such efforts such that the people are now looking elsewhere”.

Before now, several leaders of the APC in the Southeast geopolitical zone have criticized Governor Okorocha for his style of administration, which they said had jeopardized its chances of even retaining Imo, the only state it has in the zone, let alone winning in the 2019 general elections.

Specifically, Mr. Osita Okechukwu, Director-General of the Voice of Nigeria, has had hot exchanges with Okorocha, over the former’s insistence that the governor had almost destroyed the chances of the party to get enough votes for President Muhammadu Buhari, who has indicated interest to seek re-election next year.