Achiever Peterson
April 28, 2015 – Barely 24 hours after being declared winner of Abia State governorship election under the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, there are indications that the victory of the governor-Elect, Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu, may be short-lived.
Reason: One of the two governorship candidates of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Chief Reagan Ufomba, is challenging his exclusion at the election tribunal.
The political calculation among pundits is that when the APGA governorship candidate, Chief Alex Otti, will get victory at the tribunal to replace Ikpeazu, Ufomba will snatch the victory because “he was validly nominated but unlawfully excluded from the race by APGA leadership.”
He has already given signal that he would be going to the tribunal to challenge the election.
Few days before the APGA governorship primaries, the national chairman of the party, Chief Victor Umeh, who nominated Otti as APGA governorship candidate in Abia State, was restrained by Abia State High Court from parading himself as the national chairman.
In all the places visited during the recent rerun elections held at the weekend, the consensus among the people was that “the greatest mistake ever made by APGA was not giving the governorship candidacy to Chief Reagan Ufomba.”
Speaking with his supporters at his residence in Ntigha in Abia State, he said the war is not over because the party lost the governorship election due to “societal decadence, insensitivity and high handedness of APGA leadership.”
“My dear supporters, I think you should be one of the first to know; we may have lost the battle, it seems; but certainly not the war. Be encouraged as we enter the most critical and result oriented stage of the struggle. We lost to societal decadence, insensitivity and high handedness of APGA leadership.
“The story certainly would have been different if our party had built on already established structure and respected ethnic-based zoning arrangement in the state. However, we may have lost the battle, but certainly not the war. Be therefore encouraged as we enter the most critical and result-oriented phase of our struggle. I cannot thank you enough,” he said.
