By Goodluck Ikiebe
A Chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Enugu State and the Director-General of the Voice of Nigeria (VON), Osita Okechukwu, has rejected his purported expulsion by the State chapter of the party.
The Enugu State chapter of the APC had on Thursday announced the expulsion of some of its chieftains and suspended others over alleged anti-party activities and other infractions.
Chairman of the party in the state, Ugochukwu Agballah, who announced the sanctions to newsmen, said the party would continue to purge itself of such members.
In a statement, the State Secretary of the party, Robert Ngwu, said former Governor Sullivan Chime, Osita Okechukwu, and a former Speaker of the House of Assembly, Hon. Eugene Odo, have been expelled from the party.
Ngwu added that other party stalwarts expelled from the party for allegedly supporting candidates of opposition parties in the 2023 elections are Flavour Eze, Joe Mmamel and Maduka Arum.
Similarly, Ngwu said the party has suspended former Senate President, Senator Ken Nnamani, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama over alleged disobedience to the state leadership of the party.
In a swift reaction to the statement in Abuja, Osita Okechukwu said Agballah was shifting blames after destroying the party through the assistance of Governor Hope Uzodimma of Imo State.
He said, “The story of my kinsman, Ugo Agballah, is the story of a failed chairman quarreling with himself.
“He came from PDP akin to a political bandit and hijacked our great party with the assistance of HE. Hope Uzodinma, Governor of Imo State.
“To fill his empty pocket, he drove all the stakeholders away and boasted that he will quadruple the 56,000 we scored in 2019 presidential election. Regrettably he scored abysmally only 4,722 votes.
“Instead of apologizing, I cited his CV flying around at the President-elect’s house and APC HQ. This is why he is telling childish lie against some of us foundation members of APC, who sold the only plot of land in Enugu during my gubernatorial election in 2011.
“Ironically then, Agballah was in the comfort zone of PDP, while we are constructing APC structure.
“He is ignorant of APC’s constitution that gave only the ward the right to suspend or sack members”, Okechukwu remarked.
