Ex-SSG rejects Ebonyi APC guber primary results, cites inconsistency in delegate list.
Odoh, who spoke to newsmen in a media briefing in Abakaliki, the State capital cited the use of unauthentic delegate list in the conduct of the exercise which he said led to the inability of the authentic delegates to vote in the election.
He listed the allegedly affected Local Government Areas to include; Ikwo and Ezza south LGAs respectively, arguing that the decision of the electoral committee led by Senator Domingo Obende to allow the fraudulently substituted delegate lists in both LGAs to be used for the primaries was not in the best interest of both internal and external democracies which the Party relies upon to produce popular, credible and reasonably acceptable candidates to fly its flags in elections.
According to him, “I want to state here now that I reject the results of the APC primaries in Ebonyi. And I want to list the reasons for rejecting the outcome to include that firstly, the delegate list for Ikwo and Ezza south Local Government Areas were inconsistent with the documents the Party presented in our office here in Ebonyi when the committee arrived”, he stated.
The former Secretary to Ebonyi State Government added that: “Therefore, we cannot allow the Party to use that to choose the Party’s flag-bearer. Also, I hadn’t access to the delegates they used in the conduct of that election. They were delegates that were ab initio, not part of what was signed in the congress of May, this year.
The Chairman of that committee, Nicholas Ajayi had called me this morning stating that he had registered his petition against that document to the National Secretariat of our Party to the effect that the said document was not the same with the one he signed in May this year.”
Odoh maintained that if the outcome of the exercise is allowed to stand, it will become a subject of litigation. “If we further allow that to stand, it will become a matter that would further challenge and complicate our Party processes. So, I reject the result on the basis of these irregularities”, he stated, adding that as a law-abiding person who loves to respect procedures, he has commenced the process of appealing the outcome before the Appeal panel.
“Our document will get there (to the appeal committee) tomorrow morning. If the process is fair and credible, I will accept the outcome. But given what happened yesterday, I don’t accept the outcome and I know a few of other aspirants who are in the race may also follow suit”, he further asserted.
He added that the difference of 266 votes which Sen. Ogbuoji polled to emerge winner was garnered from the areas where the authentic delegate list was illegally substituted alleging further that the signature of the May congress committee Chairman, Ajayi was fraudulently scanned into the forged document.
The aspirant who also ceased the opportunity to thank his teeming supporters that were at his Campaign office to cheer him up and register their grievances over the manner the exercise was conducted claimed that the State had been thrown into ‘mourning’ instead of joy since the official announcement of the exercise.
“While reaffirming our belief in ideal democratic principles as enshrined in our Party and the Nigerian Constitutions, particularly the APC guidelines for electing the Party’s candidates, we sincerely urge our supporters to remain calm, firm and resolute as the exercise of yesterday is ONLY but a mileage to our actual destination in our struggle to inspire hope on all Ebonyians as we have scrupulously articulated in our manifesto!
We also urge them to remain law-abiding as they carry-out their day-to-day activities as we restate our belief that what is ahead of us would always be far greater than what is behind us! The outcome is not an end in itself but ONLY a beginning to actualization of our vision for a new dawn Ebonyi State, Odoh beckoned.
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