Our attention has been drawn to the report published exclusively in News Express, an online newspaper today to the effect that Chief Arthur Eze requested Senator Dr Chris Ngige and Prof. Charles Soludo not to run for the governorship elections in Anambra State in the next two years-2015.
The report entitled 2015: Arthur Eze rejects Ngige and Soludo, noted the reason for the said rejection as the need to create equity in the state, adding that Eze made the alleged statement outside Anambra State, while talking to another aspirant from Arthur Eze’s political party.
The report which claimed that Senator Ngige lost to Governor Obi in 2010 governorship elections indicated that Chief Eze told them the “to drop their aspiration for now”. We shall return to the 2010 elections claim in due course.
We can confirm that Senator Chris Ngige has no plans to contest any elections in Anambra State in 2015. Prof Soludo will speak for himself.
The only Anambra State citizen who has indicated interest in contesting an election in 2015 in the state is a former Minister of Information who has dropped hints about running for Senatorial elections in that year.
It therefore follows that Senator Ngige would not need an endorsement for an election he does not plan to run and certainly has not asked for any such endorsement.
Besides Ngige is very well grounded in the nuances of politics in Anambra State to bother about what two members of the same party, he does not belong to say to each other in the privacy of their homes, particularly when the last public declaration Ngige ever made to go into any election in Nigeria was in February 2011, when he vied to represent Anambra Central Senatorial District in the upper chambers of the National Assembly and succeeded.
This News Express report has come on a day Senator Chris Ngige leading a debate in his own motion in the Senate’s valedictory session in honour of Africa’s fallen colossus, Prof Chinua Achebe, his constituent. It is coming about 30 days after his contributions on the new health policy for Nigeria in the Senate rose to the pinnacle with the decision to slate two pilot states, Bauchi and Cross River to test run his latest brain child. This report has come one week after the Senate Retreat on the new Nigerian Constitution in which Ngige’s inputs will be better detailed by history, and one year after the heroic recovery of hitherto missing 22 barges by the robust action of Senator Ngige in the leadership of the Senate Power Committee added 1000 megawatts to Nigeria’s electric power profile.
These are but few examples that define Senator Ngige’s current pre-occupations.
Once again we restate that we in the Action Congress of Nigeria (CAN) and All Progressive Congress (APC) hold firmly to our belief in equity.
To that extent, we re-affirm that there shall be equity in the Anambra State governorship elections holding in November this year, to the extent that every Anambra citizen shall be qualified to contest and every Anambra state adult who is 18 above shall have a right to cast ONE VOTE ONLY to choose the best, while the election umpires shall COUNT THE VOTES and MAKE THE VOTES COUNT.
We also believe as part of our platform of equity that the relevance of every concept, phenomenon or person that offers the greatest good to the greatest number in Anambra state should be sustained. While atomisation of the state, divisions along primordial sentiments, divide-and-rule and pecuniary godfatherism should be jettisoned from our body politic.
Finally, we believe in the equity of free speech, in which those who freely speak up in rejection of any Greek gift or genuine gift are granted their right of refusal without violent intimidation, inspired from high temples of governance.
For: ACTION CONGRESS OF NIGERIA (ACN), ANAMBRA STATE CHAPTER
Okelo Madukaife
State Publicity Secretary
