The article by one Mr. Emma C. Nweze titled “2015 Polls: Abia PDP May Be Working For The Opposition” circulated all over the world, intended to damage the personality of the Abia State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate, Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu, was burdened with fabrications.
Nweze whom I suspect was writing under the cover of pseudonym questioned the validity of Ikpeazu’s tax up to date. This I have debated with a lot of my lawyer friends and they told me that since Ikpeazu worked for the government, the government collects its tax before paying their workers. I hope this settles the intended slur that the opposition politicians are casting against Ikpeazu.
Ikpeazu never ran his personal business, so he stands tall to challenge any goofing critic that he has been paying his tax as a government worker before he was called up to vie for the position of governor in the 2015 elections. Even in the university where he once had a stint, he never paid himself salaries. His tax was collected by the authorities that superintended how salaries were paid him before he got the PDP governorship ticket.
The National Working Committee (NWC) that the opposition politicians in Abia State continue to cite to cause unfriendliness in the state against the choice of Ikpeazu knows that a lot of propaganda and lies are being hatched against Ikpeazu. So, the great men and women in the PDP would not give in for such cheap blackmail against the government of Governor Theodore Orji and the PDP’s choice of Ikpeazu in the state.
It is a white-collar lie the insinuation making the rounds that the national body of the PDP has called on Ikpeazu to step down. It is the concern of well-meaning Abia people that Ikpeazu represents them as governor in the 2015 general elections. Nothing less. He stands for light and continuation of numerous projects which Abia people could see.
Even if they say in politics that anything goes, there will never be any way that the opposition in Abia State will win Ikpeazu in the election, because he is the choice of the people. I stand to say that the opposition is working in vein in all its blackmail against Ikpeazu. He will come out in that election triumphantly.
If it was not Ikpeazu who was voted for by the delegates in the December 8, 2014 primaries in Umuahia, I would have agreed that the PDP in the state may be working for the opposition. However, with Ikpeazu, there is no shaking.
When the choice of the governor was made known that power has to shift to Ukwa/Ngwa area of Abia State, he was not dichotomous.
In one of its treatises to mislead the general public, the factional governorship candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) Alex Otti’s camp was writing that the governor was deceiving Ikpeazu after which he would make sure that Otti becomes the governor. The truth is that the governor is not working for any candidate, neither Ikpeazu. He made his position clear earlier that he did not endorse any candidate.
Notwithstanding, as the leader of the PDP in Abia State, he will vote for Ikpeazu, like every other citizen in the state who has come to understand the potentialities that Ikpeazu is made of will do.
Hatchet critics were writing that was it the governor who encouraged Alex Otti to resign from Diamond Bank Plc and join the governorship race. The truth was that the governor was a progressive. The Governor never asked Otti to resign his job rather Otti resigned to pursue political ambition.
Had the governor stopped Otti, the same critics would have started shouting hoax that the governor was bias in his form of “equity and fair play.”
The camp of Otti would not be in APGA and yet was calling the PDP primaries in the state a charade. I want to say that the biggest charade is the one that Otti is oozing, whereas the bonafide winner of the APGA primaries in Abia State is Ochiagha Reagan Ufomba.
Ufomba’s name was it that was announced even on the 7am national news, yet Otti is parading himself as the party’s candidate. I want to state that after my research, lawyers told me that the candidature of Ikpeazu is as solid as the rock, if the opposition still insists on the details of his tax.
Besides, he has sound academic qualifications that are not faked. He had been tested and trusted. It was the make-believe story of the opposition that the state government squandered over N300 million of Abia State funds to pay 730 and delegates to vote for Ikpeazu. There was nothing like that. Those who voted on December 8 at the primaries, did so according to their conscience.
So, the likes of Emma C. Nweze who have been using tantrums against Ikpeazu should hide their faces in shame. Ikpeazu has correct tax papers.
.Hart writes from Lagos
