Anambra poll: Umeoji warns APC against imposition of candidate

An electoral official accredits a woman to vote at a polling station during the Anambra State governorship election at Uga, Aguata district in southeast Nigeria, on November 6, 2021.

Ahead of the Anambra governorship poll, an aspirant, Chukwuma Umeoji, has warned the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) against the imposition of a candidate under the guise of a consensus arrangement.

Speaking to reporters shortly after submitting his expression of interest and nomination forms at the APC National Secretariat in Abuja, he also called on the party to be wary of handing its ticket to any of the aspirants based on the depth of pockets.

Umeoji, a two-term lawmaker in the Houe of Representatives, stressed the need to give the entire card-carrying members of the party in Anambra state the opportunity to pick a candidate of their choice at the party primaries scheduled to be held on April 5, this year.

Umeoji contended that experience and exposure to the art of governance should be a requirement in selecting a candidate.

“Let all the aspirants submit themselves to the party people so that whoever wins the primaries would enjoy the support of every card-carrying member of the party,” he said.

“If you micro-manage them and pick a candidate based on consensus arrangement, they would all go to sleep. All opposition parties are waiting for APC to produce somebody who is credible and acceptable to all segments of society.

“The leadership recruitment process is key in ensuring good governance. It should not be based on the power of the purse. It should rather be based on competence and experience.

“That you have money is not a guarantee that you will do well in governance. We have to allow people who are good administrators, good manager of people irrespective of paper qualifications to be in a position of power.”

Decrying the dominance of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in the governance of Anambra state, he said he would come up with a master plan required to boost industrial, small, and medium-scale businesses in the state.

Umeoji, who represented Aguata Federal Constituency under the platform of the Labour Party (LP) in 2007, blamed the decision by Governor Charles Soludo to jettison the security masterplan in place by his predecessor, Peter Obi, for the worsening security situation in the state.

He maintained that community policing and the use of kinetic and non-kinetic approaches remain the most verifiable means to address the security challenge in the state.

“The people behind the guns are human beings. We would put up an arrangement to meet them and disarm them. We will negotiate and talk to them,” he said.

“We have people who were ex-Biafran soldiers who can be of help. We keep on saying they are unknown gunmen but what they are doing is not agitation for Biafran. it’s pure criminality.

“We will give them the window of rehabilitation. We will provide funds to resettle them. The basic problem of crime is poverty. We are going to make sure our youths are rehabilitated.”