2023: Ogah remains APC guber candidate in Abia – Party

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2023: Ogah remains APC guber candidate in Abia – Party

The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Abia State on Friday, berated the factional governorship candidate of the party over alleged misinformation on the position of the law on the current legal tussle over the outcome of the concluded gubernatorial primaries held in the state.

This comes barely after an Abuja high court sacked the APC gubernatorial candidate in Abia State for the next year’s general elections.

Recalls that a federal high court presided by Justice Binta Murtala-Nyako in Abuja, had on November 11 2022, ruled “that the indirect primary election which produced Emenike was in total disobedience to a letter forwarded by the national leadership of the All Progressives Congress to INEC that it would adopt a direct mode primary election in the state.

She also held it was alien how APC notified INEC of its decision to adopt the direct primary mode in the state and abandoned it by according recognition to a candidate, Emenike who emerged from a purported indirect primary, saying such is invalid.

The high court judge further held that the direct primary election of May 26th and 27th May 2022, which produced Ogah, a former Minister of State for Mines and Steel Development was the only valid governorship primary election conducted by APC in Abia and monitored by the Independent National Electoral Commission, report of which was endorsed by the Resident Electoral Commissioner in charge of Abia State.

On 30 November 2022, online reports surfaced, purporting a verdict of an Owerri appellate court returning the party’s factional leader, Mr Ikechi Emenike as a gubernatorial candidate in the state.

However, while clarifying the current legal tussle over the outcome of the conducted governorship primaries by the party in Abia, APC said the party had taken time to review all the judgements with its sound practising legal team.

The party in a statement signed by the state Publicity Secretary, Offor Okorie, said the high court, which affirmed Uche Ogah as the APC main Gubernatorial candidate in Abia, maintains the power to entertain every pre-election matters and that Ogah passed all tests in every court of competent jurisdiction.

The State APC chapter reaffirmed that its gubernatorial candidate in Abia is sound, marketable, and stood tall among equals to mount the saddle of the Abia leadership having demonstrated capacities, competence and expertise to address critical challenges affecting economic growth in Abia State

The party said, “as much as we look forward to the court of appeal judgement and maybe subsequent supreme court judgement, we do not see anybody controverting the written submission of INEC nor the official directive of the party in writing on the mode of Abia primaries.

“I, therefore, make bold to say that in the court judgement available to us, Dr Uche Ogah is and remains the governorship candidate of the APC in Abia for the 2023 general elections in the country”.

The state leadership urged all loyal party men to ignore all the usual antics of the factional party leader, Ikechi Emenike, and a few members of his splinter group purporting about non-existent judgement by Owerri appellate court restoring him as the party’s governorship standard-bearer in Abia State for the main elections next year.