From Chuks Collins, Awka
The Anambra State chapter of the All Progressive Congress (APC) in Anambra state has lambasted Gov Willie Obiano for choosing to abandon the security summit by South East Governors in Enugu.
Instead, Gov Obiano was accused of trying to salvage his lackluster seven years waste of space as governor by dragging around members of his docile cabinet, beleaguered party members and the governorship candidate, Prof Chukwuma Soludo on very belated campaign tours.
Believing that the Enugu security summit which was an emergency effort organized to rub minds and formulate new methods out of the recent daily killings and increasing insecurity within the geopolitical zone, especially Anambra. It was reasoned that it would benefit all the five constituting states of Anambra, Ebonyi, Abia, Enugu and Imo immensely.
APC saw it as inexcusable and very unconscionable for Gov Obiano to be absent. Same as the recent Southern Nigeria Governors Meeting also held at Enugu both of which he odiously stayed away without explanation nor sent any representative.
The party reminded him that the office of governor of Anambra state remains the people’s property and trust, hence can never be allowed to be treated like a personal handkerchief he was free to use as he likes. Every act or inaction must be accounted for to the people. They wished never again would a “baby-man” who has not weaned himself from childish misconduct be allowed to mount the exalted seat.
Apparently acting from an insider knowledge days ahead the meeting, H/E Iyom Bianca Odumegwu Ojukwu had raised an alarm in a message widely circulated in the media spaces calling on wellmeaning citizens to urge the governor to attend the security meeting, that Anambra needs it most, as the seeming epicenter of the burgeoning insecurity in the zone.
She stated, “…An emergency South East Governors meeting is taking place tomorrow 5th October 2021 to discuss the worsening state of insecurity in the zone, particularly in Anambra State which has become a crisis point as a result of the impending guber elections.
“All South East State governors have been requested to attend IN PERSON and not in representative capacity. I am appealing, together with All concerned citizens of Anambra to our governor, Chief Willie Obiano to PHYSICALLY attend this meeting. Anambra is boiling. It’s no longer just a matter of unknown gunmen….even Politically motivated and other opportunistic killings have now become subsumed under this heading. Just last week 8 people, including an illustrious Son, Dr Chike Akunyili , were gruesomely murdered in different locations of the state. Yesterday Unizik Teaching Hospital was invaded by rampaging gunmen and a student was shot dead, with another killing and other casualties reported overnight.
“Anambra state is in mayhem; people are postponing funerals and other activities and many Anambra indigenes resident abroad are canceling their Christmas return trips.
“I am appealing to Governor Willie Obiano, who is yet again, planning to send his Deputy to represent him, to reconsider this approach. This is not business as usual…our people are dying almost on a daily basis. As our governor, he is the Chief Security Officer of the State. If he is hale and hearty enough to undertake ceaseless sightseeing excursions to the Anambra Airport Construction Site, I believe it will not be too much to ask that he sacrifices some of this precious time to attend this important security meeting for the sake, not only of Ndi Anambra But Ndi Igbo as a whole.”
To have ignored the appeal and failed to attend the meeting just like most other very strategic meetings in parts of the country in recent times, it then become a big cause for concern how he runs Anambra state.
On its own, the APC statement reads, “Yesterday, Governor Willie Obiano led the campaign trail of his party to Anambra East and Anambra West Local Government Areas of Anambra State as reported.
“He also held a meeting of Ward Chairmen of his party.
“The focus here is not what he would have told two local governments, including his own that the state government had stolen blind, while refusing to conduct LG elections to enable them be accoubtable to themselves.
“It is also not to ask what he will tell a shadow of ward structures in a party he has raped through autocracy.
“The focus here is that the governor and his party can campaign when the other 17 political parties in the state cannot and his conscience allowed him, on a day South East Governors were meeting to address the security situation in the geopolitical zone.
“Do Governor Obiano, his Agulerised cabinet and his party realise what it means to be the father of a state and what it does not?
“Obiano has refused a unilateral solution of the superlative security snarl in his state, while also rejecting a multilateral solution provided by the aegis of South East Governors’ Forum in which meeting yesterday Anambra State was not represented.
“Even if Obiano chooses to pick quarrels with his deputy for religious reasons, he ought to have sent someone he is not quarreling with or made an attempt to attend himself.
“To reject both and be the governor of APGA alone is a fundamental error of judgment which a future APC State Government will not fall for.
“We urge Governor Obiano to manage to get over the weight the office of the governor has placed om his troubled shoulders as six months ahead is not six years.”
It added that what Gov Obiano abysmally failed to achieve in the last seven whole years, with huge resources at his disposal cannot be achieved with empty rhetorics at campaign of hired crowd of bitter angry citizens who he has denied quality life.
