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The above article published in BusinessDay of Sunday, 6th May, 2018 refers.
The said article makes reference to the events in Imo APGA during the 2015 elections and, to some extent, the role of Mr. Okey Ezeh, a governorship aspirant of the party, in those events.
First, Mr. Okey Ezeh, just in that article, is said to have organised a parallel congress. Also, he is said to have taken the party to court. Finally, he is said to have supported a PDP governorship candidate.
Let me be clear: lies, more lies and lies again won’t stop an idea which time has come. Sponsoring falsehoods won’t help any aspirant, because in the final analysis, people will remember you not for what you succeeded in destroying but for what you were able to build.
For those who weren’t in the party by 2015, some clarifications are in order here. There was never a time that a parallel congress was organised by Mr. Okey Ezeh. As a bona fide APGA aspirant in 2015, Mr. Okey Ezeh participated only in the congress held at Rosey Arts Theatre, Ikenegbu Layout, Owerri. At that time another faction of APGA was in existence, which was led by C. C. Nwaka. Their grouse was what they saw as an unconstitutional truncation of their tenure and they had gone to court to challenge it. That case had been in court even before Mr. Okey Ezeh joined the governorship race.
Now, follow the narrative. The same day and time the Ezeobi-led APGA was holding its congress, the Nwaka-led faction was holding its own as well at, as I later read, NUJ Secretariat, Owerri. The outcome of what happened at Nwaka’s congress could have possibly been read by Mr. Ezeh on the pages of the newspapers because he knew nothing about it. We were all at Rosey Arts Theatre.
Indeed, the 2015 congress did not favour Mr. Okey Ezeh because of the brazen irregularities that characterized it. The situation was so bad that Mr. Okey Ezeh had been denied nomination and expression of intent forms by the party. This angered some officers of the party in the state who took a protest to Abuja and unfortunately got involved in a very tragic road accident.
On the day of the congress, delegates were beaten up, teargassed and shut out by hefty, stern-looking thugs who were drafted into the exercise by an anointed aspirant. Mr. Okey Ezeh was rigged out in a very painful manner which observers never believed could have easily been forgiven. But Mr. Okey Ezeh forgave and forgot almost immediately.
There was never a time Mr. Okey Ezeh took the party to court. I challenge anybody who makes any claim to the contrary to publish the details of such court action.
Finally, the claim that Mr. Okey Ezeh supported a PDP candidate sounds absurd. Let me give you a practical example. My strong bond with Mr. Okey Ezeh is well known. But I worked as the LGA collation officer of APGA in Ideato North in 2015. Go get the 2015 governorship result sheet and see if it’s not Prince Collins Opurozor, one of Okey Ezeh’s allies, that signed as Capt. Ihenacho’s LGA Agent. So there was never a time Mr. Okey Ezeh did anything against the party. Never did he tell us or tell anyone else not to work for our party!
Please, aspirants and their rented supporters should learn to stop being obsessed with Okey Ezeh and focus on what to do for Imo people if elected. For Okey Ezeh, it’s about the rebirth of Imo State and the time is now!
Collins Opurozor
Opurozor is media director to Okey Ezeh, a governorship aspirant of the All Progressives Grand Alliance in Imo State.
