Admin l Monday, February 13, 2017
ABUJA, Nigeria – Former National Chairman of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Chief Victor Umeh, has maintained he won the March 28, 2015 Anambra Central Senatorial poll, noting that the then candidate of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which was the ruling party at the centre, Mrs. Uche Ekwunife, only used security agents to rig the election.
Umeh made the assertion while responding to Ekwunife’s statement that he cannot win any election in Anambra State.
Ekwunife while speaking with journalists after last Friday’s Supreme Court judgement that dashed her hope of returning to the Senate and brightened Umeh’s chances of going to the Red Chamber, said the APGA candidate would never be a Senator. Expressing displeasure over the ruling of the Apex Court, she alleged that Umeh only won because he has spent all his life in courts and have come to know all the judges.
But in his reaction Umeh said: “Well, she is my younger sister. And I can’t join issues with somebody who has lost. You can say that she is frustrated and angry. But I will use this opportunity to plead with her to exercise restraints. She doesn’t need to speak recklessly because she lost an obvious battle. When she went to the House of Representatives, I was the one that helped her to get there through APGA. I was a good man then. And now that she has tried to bite the finger that fed her and she got burnt what do you expect me to tell her. She should respect the constitution. And the Justices have told her that National Assembly election matters end in the Court of Appeal. As to whether I can win an election or not, it’s a joke. I defeated her in that election.
She used the police, the army and the connivance of some people to rig the election. She never won it. The results from the field were clear that she didn’t win the election. From the first victory they gave her that she scored 101, 000, at the tribunal it turned down to 93,000 votes. And my own was 86,000 votes. Is that something that will make somebody to be that audacious to tell you that I will never win an election when I polled 86, 000 valid votes compared to her 93,000 rigged votes? I can understand she is bitter and I forgive her.”
The APGA chieftain added: “I want to advise her not to attack the judiciary because she lost. If she failed today, she should take it calmly and wait for another time. This is not a do-or-die-battle. If I had lost today, I would have worked away from this court. I won’t go to ECOWAS Court. You understand. I exhausted the judicial processes. I don’t do protest. I have never used violence throughout my political life. What I have done is to use the machinery of justice. What the constitution says or the law says – those are the things I do.”
