A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Enugu State and the Director-General of the Voice of Nigeria (VON), Osita Okechukwu, has rejectedย his purported expulsion by the State chapter of the party.
Recall that the Enugu State chapter of the APC had on Thursday announced the expulsion of some of its chieftains and suspended others over alleged anti-party activities and other infractions.
Chairman of the party in the state, Ugochukwu Agballah, who was at the briefing to announce the sanctions, said the party would continue to purge itself of such members.
In a statement, the State Secretary of the party, Robert Ngwu, said former Governor Sullivan Chime, Osita Okechukwu, and a former Speaker of the House of Assembly, Hon. Eugene Odo, have been expelled from the party.
Ngwu added that other party stalwarts expelled from the party for allegedly supporting candidates of opposition parties in the 2023 elections are Flavour Eze, Joe Mmamel and Maduka Arum.
Similarly, Ngwu said the party has suspended former Senate President, Senator Ken Nnamani, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama over alleged disobedience to the state leadership of the party.
But reacting in a statement to newsmen,ย Okechukwu said Agballah was shifting blames after destroying the party through the assistance of Governor Hope Uzodimma of Imo State.
He said, โThe story of my kinsman Ugo Agballah is the story of a failed chairman quarreling with himself.
โHe came from PDP akin to a political bandit and hijacked our great party with the assistance of HE. Hope Uzodinma, governor of Imo.
โTo fill his empty pocket he drove all the stakeholders away and boasted he will quadruple the 56,000 we scored in 2019 presidential election. Regrettably he scored abysmally only 4,722.
โInstead of apologizing, I cited his CV flying around at the president-electโs house and APC HQ. This why he is telling childish lie against some of us foundation members of APC, who sold the only plot of land in Enugu during my gubernatorial election in 2011.
โIronically then, Agballah was in the comfort zone of PDP, while we are constructing APC structure.
โHe is ignorant of APCโs constitution that gave only the ward the right to suspend or sack members.โ