A civil society group, the Enugu Good Governance Group, E-3G, has asked the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to sanction the Enugu State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC), its governorship candidate, Chief Uche Nnaji, and the State Chairman, Chief Ugochukwu Agballah.
The group hinged its petition on the claim that the party is deceiving Enugu people with ‘a fake deputy governorship candidate’.
It said the final amended list of candidates for the 2023 governorship election published by INEC on its website on 30th January 2023 had further confirmed that the Enugu APC was parading a fake deputy governorship candidate in George Ogara.
The group said the reason for parading Ogara, who hails from Enugu North zone as the deputy governorship candidate, was to hide the fact that the real governorship candidate of the APC, Chief Robert Ngwu, and the governorship candidate, Uche Nnaji, hail from Enugu East senatorial zone.
In a statement issued on Thursday by its National Coordinator, Comrade Odinaka Okechukwu, the group said it petitioned the INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, to stop what it called “fraudulent governorship campaigns by the Enugu State chapter of the APC”.
“The INEC published the final list of candidates for Governorship and State House of Assembly elections on 4th October, 2022, which had the name of Uche Nnaji, serial number 277, as the governorship candidate of the APC in Enugu, and Robert Ngwu, serial number 778, as the deputy governorship candidate.
“On 30th January 2023, INEC published the ‘Amended List of Final Candidates Pursuant to Court Orders, Death, and Corrections of Errors Made by Political Parties’ in line with Section 287 of the 1999 Constitution.
“We observed that the changes did not affect any political party in Enugu, hence Robert Ngwu remains the deputy governorship candidate of the Enugu APC.
“We, therefore, wonder why the Enugu APC has continued to deceive the electorate by parading a fake deputy governorship candidate in the person of George Ogara.
“We hold that it is fraudulent, ignoble, anti-democratic, and must be immediately sanctioned by the INEC”, the group stated.
An enquiry sent to Ogara was yet to be responded to as of the time of filing this report.
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