Peace Committee storms Enugu as aggrieved APC members demand refund of nomination fee

GOVERNOR Umar Ganduje of Kano State led-Peace and Reconciliation Committee of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on Sunday stormed Enugu the Enugu State capital with a view to pacifying aggrieved members of the Party, especially the aspirants who lost out in the party’s last primaries in the state.

Ganduje told members of the APC that they should work in unity to realise the re-election of President Muhammadu Buhari and make Southeast an APC zone, stressing that it was high time Ndigbo returned to the mainstream of national polity.

While acknowledging that many things were not done right during the primaries, he urged the aspirants to bury the hatchet, adding “in a family, there are peace and reconciliation, we are all members of one family. In a family, there are bound to be grievances, but if you want to save the name of the family, you swallow the bitter pill.”

According to him, “Election is around the corner, if you continue to disagree, INEC does not wait for anybody, but what it means is that you will have to wait for another four years, no system is perfect.

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“In politics, one very important thing is patience. If you are not patient, you lose direction.

We are learning democracy, that’s why we are having full of mistakes. A lot of irreconcilable differences occurred during the primary, changing people’s names, writing lists.

Ganduje urged the party to make regular meetings a priority, stressing “if there is constant meeting, you know yourselves, not a situation where you leave it until the election, everybody will go and buy form, that’s why you end up in this kind of situation.”

He used the event to appeal to the Southeast to support Buhari, who he said was passionate about the zone.

“We want to return Southeast to the mainstream. Buhari took Igbo man twice to be his running mate, but he was not given the support, that’s how that opportunity was lost. There is no better Presidential candidate than Buhari today. He loves Nigeria more than himself, not tribalistic, does not accumulate wealth, he is working on the economy to make the country prosperous.

“He is building the railway, in the next level, every state capital will have a working rail system. PDP did nothing as far as infrastructure is concerned. Political revolution is going on in the southeast because many people are embracing APC. So, we have to put our house in order, support all our candidates.”

Earlier, a governorship aspirant of the party, Chief Ben Eche, alleged that members of the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) committee committed fraud in the state, suggesting that the party should refund those who were shortchanged in the primaries the money they paid for nomination and expression of interest form for a lasting peace in party in the state.

Eche told the committee that, “the primary conducted in Enugu State was entirely faulty. The party knows that nothing was done.”

“So, if it is talking about reconciliation, the first thing to do is to compile names of all the aspirants and send their money to them, Return our money and the local chapter of the party will now call us, if you don’t do the first one, the second one will be hard to accomplish.

“All these aspirants that contested have supporters. People are aggrieved; in fact, what the NWC did to us was wayo, they played us 419,” he fumed.