The secretary of a faction of the All Progressive Congress in Abia State, Perfect Okorie, has said his faction of the party in the state remains intact and has not collapsed structure with any other party.
Okorie spoke against the backdrop of a reconciliation meeting of the two factions of the party in the state on Saturday.
The factional groups of the party and their leaders had met at the weekend and resolved to bury the hatchet and forge a united front ahead of the 2023 general election.
The former chairman of the party in the state, Chief Donatus Nwamkpa, had preached peace and urged party members to jettison divisive activities and embrace the only one APC in Abia, recognised by the national secretariat of the party, with Ikechi Emenike as her flag bearer for the 2023 governorship election.
Nwamkpa, who was the leader of the warring faction had said that the chairman he handed over had also left the party and joined the Labour Party while urging all his supporters to join the united APC under Chief Kingsley Ononogbu as state chairman.
But Okorie, in a reaction, doubted the statement by Nwamkpa, saying it was not true.
He said, “I know that Donatus Nwamkpa, who is our former chairman will not come out to make such comments.
“Abia APC under the acting chairmanship of Hon. Goldie Nwagbara and myself as secretary are still intact, it has not moved, cannot move; it has not negotiated with anybody and is not willing to negotiate with anybody to the extent of saying that we are collapsing our structure.
“We know we are the true APC in the state irrespective of the antics that might be playing around. We are the authentic APC.”
Okorie said if there was any structure that was collapsing, it should collapse with their own, adding that “if there is any faction that exists in anybody’s imagination, they should come and collapse with us.”
On who the governorship candidate of the party is, Okorie said it was Ogah. “On May 25, we held our party governorship primary in tandem with the directives of the NWC of our party which was the direct primary.
“But certain persons, who believed they cannot stand the test of a fair contest, went and conducted a concocted process which they called indirect primary.
“Whatever is the outcome, that is their business. But one thing remains very sacrosanct and that is, there can never be any indirect primary in Abia State, the reason being that apart from the letter written by the national chairman of the party to that effect, it is on record that even INEC noted that Abia APC never conducted any delegates congress to create room for any indirect primary.”
The APC state scribe said, on their own, they conducted the primary according to the directives of the NWC, which produced the former Minister of State for Mines and Steel Development, Uche Ogah, as the party’s flag bearer in the state.
“The process that produced Ogah was duly monitored by INEC and the records are there, so, whatever any other person is doing, remains a mere waste of time”, he said.
Punch
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