The All Progressives Congress (APC) said, yesterday, that it would not give its governorship ticket for the 2023 gubernatorial elections in Enugu State to former Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu.

It also urged the senator, who recently lost in the governorship primary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Enugu, to respect zoning and quit the scene, since he had occupied elective offices in the last 24 years.

Addressing a press conference in Enugu to intimate the people on the party’s readiness to take over Enugu, the state’s APC Chairman, Ugochukwu Agballah, said the senator had been wooing the national leadership of the party to be handed over Enugu governorship ticket.

Agballa said: “I held discussions with Ekweremadu, just like my other friends in PDP. But he asked for the guber ticket.

“Even after the primary, I’m surprised. His demand is repugnant to natural justice. It’s Ignoble. It’s evil and we shall resist it.

“This is a man who is in court claiming he was subverted in the PDP primary, and now running up and down asking to contravene the Electoral Act he engineered.

“He is putting pressure on the national chairman. He is not a member of the APC. The truth is that nobody will give him a waiver to subvert what we have done. We cannot give him our governorship ticket. I see him as one of the heroes of the Electoral Act.

“The governorship position is not even zoned to his zone. Now he wants to subvert our system. What kind of man is Ekweremadu? Who is Ekweremadu? He has been in government for 24 years; he should support others for once.”

Agballa stated that APC is ready to win Enugu, stressing that the outcome of the governorship primary of the PDP was to the advantage of the party.

He said there was no comparison between the governorship candidate of the APC and that of the PDP, and asked Enugu people to support APC to liberate the state.