APGA Meets To Decide Position On Anambra Election

The national leadership of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) will meet in Abuja to streamline its position on the Anambra State gubernatorial election scheduled for November 6, 2021.

This is just as the All Progressives Congress (APC) has denied media reports that aspirants shunned its expression of interest and nomination forms for the poll.

National chairman of APGA, Chief Edozie Njoku, told The Guardian, yesterday, that some aspirants purchased forms from a faction of the party led by a former chairman, Victor Oye, at N22.5 million, while his faction, which he described as authentic, sold its set of forms at N12.5 million.

Njoku explained that the NWC meeting became imperative following representations by well-meaning members of the party, stressing that the meeting would help APGA to ensure that no aspirant was disenfranchised.

“It has dawned on the teeming stalwarts of APGA that the mixture of law and facts favour the National Working Committee (NWC) led by my humble self. We have bowed to the wishes of the members and summoned the NWC meeting to streamline our position and accommodate everybody,” he stated.

Meanwhile, APC has pegged its expression of interest and nomination forms at N2.5 million and N20 million respectively, and fixed the governorship primary for June 26.

However, no sooner had the party released notice for the commencement of the sale of forms than aspirants reportedly shunned the forms out of fear that the party was planning to favour a particular aspirant.

In a statement yesterday, Secretary of APC Caretaker and Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee (CECPC), Senator John Akpanudoedehe, disclosed that “the party has no preferred aspirant,” pointing out that about 12 aspirants had already purchased the forms.

Akpanudoedehe assured that the party would conduct a transparent primary, adding that female as well as physically-challenged aspirants would pay 50 per cent of the prescribed fees.

An aspirant, Senator Andy Uba, said there was no truth in the speculation that no aspirant paid for the party’s forms to contest the election.

In a statement by his media office, Uba described the report as misleading, pointing out that “the report attempted to lump both the serious and unserious, the contenders and the pretenders, the faint-hearted and the brave-hearted, which we find unprofessional.”