Director of Communications and spokesperson for Enugu PDP Campaign Council, Barr. Nana Ogbodo, said the ‘poor’ attendance and boycott of the presidential rally by notable leaders of the party in the state, have further validated the lack of popularity of the APC in the state.
The Enugu State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has described the presidential rally of the All Progressives Congress held in the state on Wednesday, as a “monumental flop which starkly underlines an outright rejection of the party by the people."
Director of Communications and spokesperson for Enugu PDP Campaign Council, Barr. Nana Ogbodo, said the ‘poor’ attendance and boycott of the presidential rally by notable leaders of the party in the state, have further validated the lack of popularity of the APC in the state.
He said it also validated the position of the PDP that the crisis in the APC and the recent protest against the state chairman of the party, Chief Ugochukwu Agballah, and its governorship candidate, Chief Uche Nnaji, in Abuja is squarely a fight between angry and deprived members and a greedy and conceited state party leadership.
"What else can be more humiliating than the embarrassing drama that played out live on national television on Wednesday? It is an open rebuke of a delusional leader," Ogbodo stated in a statement.
The National Chairman of the party, Senator Abdullahi Adamu; former Senate President, Sen. Ken Nnamani; Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama; former governor of Enugu State, Sullivan Chime; Senator Ayogu Eze, former Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Hon. Eugene Odoh, and the Director-General of Voice of Nigeria, Osita Okechukwu, were among the leaders and stakeholders of the party who boycotted the Enugu presidential rally.
Although the party leaders in the state were at the Enugu airport to receive the APC’s presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, and his running mate, Senator Kashim Shettima, they however boycotted the rally at the Okpara Square and converged at the residence of the former governor of Enugu State, Sullivan Chime where they addressed members of the press.
The party leaders including Senator Ken Nnamani, Chime, Onyeama, and Odoh told journalists that they were still insistent on their position during the August 2022 protest meeting with the party’s national leadership that they would not work with Chief Ugcohukwu Agballah, whom they described as an imposter, and called on the party leadership to “do the right thing”.
The aggrieved members of the Enugu APC on Monday staged a protest at the party’s national secretariat where they submitted a petition to the national leadership over what they described as acts of “impunity, gross misconducts, incompetence, divisiveness, maladministration and embezzlement of party funds” totalling about N1.3 billion by Chief Agballah and Chief Nnaji.
The protesters led by Comrade Adolphus Ude, leader of the Concerned Enugu APC Members, who is also the pioneer Deputy Chairman of the party in Enugu, also called the attention of APC national leadership to the “fraudulent parading of Barr. George Ogara as the party’s deputy governorship candidate whereas the name and particulars of Chief Robert Ngwu were still contained in the records and website of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as the real deputy governorship candidate”.
They, therefore, called for the immediate removal of Agballah and the appointment of a caretaker chairman to salvage what may still be left of the party in Enugu State.
Reacting to the development, the Enugu State PDP further said, “Maybe Chief Ogochukwu Agballah will henceforth face his demons and stop blaming the PDP or our governorship candidate for every of his self-inflicted woes. We have no reason to worry about the Enugu APC that is already irredeemably destroyed by Agballah. We maintain that he is a clergyman without a congregation. Despite shamelessly bussing rented crowd from neighbouring states, Agballah could still not fill the small venue he chose for something as huge as a presidential rally.
“Agballah should, therefore, go home and make peace with his aggrieved party members and restitute whatever he has taken from them.
“We call on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to immediately commence the probe of the serious allegations of embezzlement of members’ and party funds levelled against Agballah and the governorship candidate, Chief Uche Nnaji, by well-known Enugu APC leaders."