Anambra guber: APGA kicks as INEC excludes Soludo

The All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) has urged President Muhammadu Buhari and the National Assembly to call the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to order over the substitution of its governorship candidate, Professor Chukwuma Charles Soludo, for the Anambra State governorship election.

The national chairman of the APGA, Dr Victor Ike Oye, made the call yesterday in Abuja at a news conference while reacting to the list of 18 registered parties’ candidates released by the INEC for the election, slated for November 6.

He said that one Jude Okeke and his co-travellers had infiltrated the INEC to publish an aspirant that did not make it through to the primary of the party and to announce him as its governorship candidate.

According to him, after its primary election was concluded, the party submitted the particulars of its governorship candidate to the INEC on July 2 and was it duly acknowledged.

He expressed dismay that the INEC was giving credence to some persons “alien to the APGA,” who had gone to procure a judgement from a Jigawa court to drop Soludo as its governorship candidate.

Oye said there wass a subsisting order of the Federal High Court in Awka, Anambra State, directing the INEC to maintain status quo and receive the particulars of Professor Soludo and his deputy, Dr Onyekachi Ibezim, submitted by his leadership and publish same.

Meanwhile, Soludo has vowed that nothing would stop him from contesting the November 6 governorship election in Anambra State on the platform of the APGA.

In a statement by the Chukwuma Soludo Campaign Organisation yesterday, the group noted that a team of legal experts had studied the judgement of the High Court in Jigawa State and assured of overturning it effortlessly.

Daily Trust Saturday reports that INEC also did not list the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in the list of candidates released yesterday.

However, the INEC has listed a member of the House of Representatives, Chukwuma Michael Umeoji as the flag-bearer of the APGA in the November 6 governorship election.

The electoral umpire also named Senator Andy Uba, who won the controversial primary election of the All progressives Congress (APC), as the candidate of the party for the November election.

The names were contained in the list of candidates for the Anambra State governorship election published by the commission and signed by its national commissioner and chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee (IVEC), Festus Okoye yestetday in Abuja.

Prior to the primaries, the APGA was enmeshed in crisis, with two factions laying claim to the leadership of the party.