• Says no more bribery, favouritism for party tickets
David-Chyddy Eleke in Awka
The Governor of Anambra State and national leader of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, has read the riot act to the leaders and members of the party, while reeling out guidelines for the conduct of the party’s forthcoming primary elections.
Soludo, who addressed APGA faithful yesterday during the South-east zonal convention of the party held at the International Convention Centre (ICC), Awka, the Anambra State capital, revealed that the party would adopt Option A4 for the primaries.
Soludo said this would beat rigging and also enhance transparency in the party, while cutting down waste of scarce resources through vote buying.
He said: “I know that most of you may not be happy with this new strategy because you see politics and party membership as business. Most of you may even say ‘why does this man want to spoil our show during this political season’?
“What we are doing is to cut wastefulness and also ensure the health and credibility of our party. Let me tell you, there are people here who may have saved some money to buy shuttle buses; maybe the money is not yet complete, and they are waiting for this political season to make up to buy it.
“But we don’t want this period to be business-as-usual. Our aspirants who want to make money should be able to save up their resources to be able to fight their opponents in other parties in the main election, instead of spending it during the primary election.
“We are going to adopt Option A4 in all our primary elections this season. The essence is that once you look back and you are winning, you will know you are winning. When you see a long line of people behind you, you will know you are winning.
“It is not the one that you will pay money to people, and they will tell you they are for you, and because it is a secret ballot, they will go and vote against you. We want to curb all that. There are many other things we want to do to ensure that this party stands.”
The governor also said henceforth, the party would not tolerate aspirants eyeing more than one position.
“If you want to run for governor, please make up your mind about that. We will not tolerate people occupying one seat and vying for another seat.
“We want to ask you all, if you are a member of this party, make up your mind about the position you want to aspire for. For example, if you are going to aspire to be governor, start now. In the next three years and some months, I will be leaving office, you can start now to begin to prepare, not going to pick up a senatorial seat and when it is time for the governorship election, you also come out again.
“Let me tell you people how this thing works. Once somebody is interested in governor and he aspires and gets Senate, the tendency is that he will not concentrate on his Senate duties. All his intentions are to make money that he will use to vie for governor.
“That is something we want to stop. We want all party members to ensure they look at the various positions they want to vie for and go for them.”
The governor added that “henceforth, it is strictly prohibited for aspirants to visit members of the state executive in their homes to bribe them. All meetings would be held at the party office.”
Earlier, the National Chairman of the party, Mr. Sly Ezeokenwa read out a long list of code of conduct for members that also tallied with the speech by the governor. He insisted that his leadership was on a mission to clean up the party.
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