Governor Sullivan Iheanacho Chime of Enugu State has reiterated that there is no going back on the conduct of the Local Government elections scheduled for November 2, 2013. He made the remark following the hitch-free primary elections in which twelve council chairmen were given another mandate by stakeholders and party members to contest for their second terms while five are first term candidates.
This will be a record fourth Council poll to be conducted by the Chime administration since 2007 in what he described as “our commitment to deepen democracy and enthrone a Local Government system as dictated by our constitution.”
Said Chime: “I believe that the Enugu State Independent Electoral Commission (ENSIEC) is prepared for the Council elections slated for November 2, this year. For us as a Government, we’ve done our own bit by providing them with the needed logistics to conduct a free and credible poll like we did in the last three exercises. So, there’s no going back on the conduct of the elections on that date.
“As you know, this will be our fourth Council election since we came on board. We’ve always conducted them on schedule because of our wide range of consultations and the transparency shown in the previous ones. That’s why we’ve not had disruptions and other violent acts.”
The governor also expressed optimism that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will emerge victorious in the polls. “In the 2011 general elections,” he says, “Enugu State delivered one hundred per cent to the PDP, from the presidential to the state assembly polls. Also, in the last Council polls in 2011, our party won all the councillorship and chairmanship seats.
“So, I thank our people for the confidence reposed in our party. I also thank our party members for the peaceful way they handled the party primaries of last Saturday (September 14). I enjoin those elected to fly our flags in the 17 Local Government Councils to take their message of service delivery to our people when the time comes.”
Speaking in a similar vein, the state chairman of the party, Vita Abba thanked the party members for the success of the September 10 and 14 primaries for the respective councillorship and chairmanship seats and emphasized the readiness of the party to contest the November 2 polls.
According to Abba, “our primary elections were held in a very peaceful and transparent manner. Except in four or more Local Government Areas where the candidates were returned unopposed, the people had the opportunity to vote for the candidates of their choices and at the end, results were collated and announced in the different councils. Today, we have a final list of our councillorship and chairmanship candidates.
“For us as a party, it is a thing of pride that Sullivan Chime remains one of the few governors to have kept faith with the conduct of the Local Government Areas, thereby entrenching democratic system at the grassroots. This is the fourth Council election that the Chime administration is conducting and Enugu remains unarguably the only state in the current dispensation to have conducted four Local Government polls.”
The party chairman was confident of a landslide victory in the coming exercise. “We’ve always said that Enugu is a one-party state and we say so with every sense of decency and decorum. If you go back to the last general elections, we gave PDP one hundred per cent. Governor Chime took the campaign for Mr. President’s election to all the nooks and crannies of the state and the results justified the efforts. And so it was for the other elections.
“When the chips settle on November 2, I’m confident that the results will not be different from the last exercise. That’s the benefit of the good governance that Governor Chime and the council chairmen have continued to provide.
The twelve chairmen who got the nod to contest for their second terms in office include Christopher Nwobodo (Aninri), Mathanus Nze (Awgu), Cornelius Nnaji (Enugu East), Emeka Edeh (Enugu North), Emeka Ozoagu (Ezeagu), Festus Ozoemena (Igbo-Etiti) and Bonaventure Onuh (Igbo-Eze North).
Others are Festus Ozioko (Igbo-Eze South), Augustine Nnamani (Isi-Uzo), Sam Iyiogwe (Nkanu East), Chinedu Iloeje (Udi) and Cornel Onwubuya (Uzo-Uwani). The new entrants are Victor Agbo (Enugu South), Afam Okereke (Nkanu West), Charles Ugwu (Nsukka), Chideofor Onyemechi (Oji River) and Amaechi Nwodo (Udenu).
The results of the September 14 chairmanship primaries put to rest the widespread speculations that Governor Chime was going to influence the dethronement of certain council chairmen with known and/or perceived closeness and loyalty to some National Assembly members from the state.
Rather than toe this line, it was the governor who set the tone of the results that emerged when he pleaded with stakeholders and PDP members across the state to give the councillors and chairmen who had done only their first term another chance to serve their people.
According to one of the governor’s confidants, it was quite ridiculous that some people thought that Governor Chime would be so parochial as to engineer any of the chairmen being dropped because of any presumed antagonism following his reminder to the National Assembly members of an existing agreement.
“It beats the imagination how some people ever thought that the governor would work against any of the chairmen because of such narrow notion of their loyalty to other persons,” our source said. “The truth of the matter is that he (Chime) has often preached that we have a united family in the Enugu State chapter of the PDP.
“He’s a man who sees the bigger picture. There’s no bad blood he feels towards anybody and he has demonstrated this by the way he piloted the affairs leading to the emergence of the chairmanship candidates for the November LG polls. “
When contacted on the matter, the state Commissioner for Information, Chuks Ugwoke dismissed any such insinuation with a wave of the hand. “That’s a lame talk by people with ulterior motives,” he says.
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