By Ewa Innocent, The Sight News
Abakaliki: Governor David Umahi of Ebonyi state has emphasised the need for All Progressive Congress(APC) Party faithfuls in the state to work together, so as to bring good result.
He made the appeal during a stakeholders APC meeting held at the Ecumenical Centre, Abakaliki to finetune the forthcoming Ward Congresses of the Party, slated for July 31, 2021.
Governor Umahi who commended the leadership of the Party in the state for moving the Party forward through transparent manner, however, decried the level of petitions by some members in the state, which he said, had tried to factionalized the Party, stressing that such could deter the state from getting what they want at the federal level.
According to governor David Umahi, “If you go to ministries at federal level or parastatals you find out that Ebonyi state is highly disadvantaged, maybe Ebonyi state did not have APC governor ab initio, but even at that, without factionalization and petitions, the state would have gotten more tangible deals.
“You go to the Ministry of Education, the number of petitions in that Ministry, Ebonyi state is the highest.
And so, when we are writing petitions against ourselves and bringing peditions, how can we go to the same people to give us what belongs to us?
“But, if we work together, only one person could be governor, we could work together and have two Ministers, we could work together and have grade A parastatals. I am appealing that we do everything to work together.
On the issues of consensus candidate, Governor David Umahi said, even though the Party emphasizes on consensus, the consensus must be tested on the field, stressing that the will of the people must prevail if the Party wants to win elections.
“We would like to have transparent congresses. We would like the rural people to have their say so that our elections would be rancour free, so that there will be peace in that place.
“Inasmuch as I have been doing everything to unite the PDP members that came newly to APC and those that were in APC before, let me emphasise that we would never put a knife between the old APC and new APC members.
“There is nobody here, let me say 99.9 Percent,that was not in one Party or the other before coming to APC. We were all joining APC at different times, and so there is nothing like foundational APC members or foundational PDP members”, he stressed.
Earlier, the APC state caretaker chairman, Chief Stanley Okoro Emegha, had warned that APC in the state would no longer tolerate frivolous petitions to national leadership of the Party as the APC Constitution provides avenue to explore in settling differences among Party members even at the state level.
He added that the national leadership of the party, APC, has acknowledged the fact that Ebonyi is the fast developing state in Nigeria, and commended governor David Umahi for being the torchbearer.
