Abia APGA Alleges Oye’s Plot to Frustrate Otti’s Petition at Tribunal

Emmanuel Ugwu in Umuahia

Abia State chapter of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) has expressed reservations over the alleged complicity of the party’s National Chairman, Chief Victor Oye in moves to frustrate the petition filed by the 2019 governorship candidate of the party, Mr. Alex Otti.

Otti, who came third in the last governorship poll, is currently engaged in a legal battle to reclaim his “stolen mandate.”

In a statement made available to journalists in Umuahia, the state chairman of APGA, Hon. Nkem Okoro, alleged that the party was aware of a high level conspiracy by former state officials of the party to scuttle Otti’s case with Oye’s backing.

Former state chairman of APGA, Revd Augustine Ehiemere, who is now leading a faction, was said to have hired a lawyer with a brief to kill off the petition by withdrawing the party from the case on the ground that the party was not involved in the petition filed by its governorship flag bearer.

Okoro said it was regrettable that APGA national chairman decided to collaborate with “the enemies” of the party to torpedo the efforts to recover Otti’s mandate at the tribunal.

He stated that Oye was out to betray his own party in Abia just because he has some grudges against the party’s governorship candidate, accusing the national chairman of instigating the crises rocking the party in many states of the South-east in his desperation to return as the national chairman of APGA.

He expressed shock that the former state chairman of the party could apply for the withdrawal of APGA from the petition at a time the tribunal had fixed a date for the adoption of the written addresses of parties in the suit.

Okoro alleged that those behind the plot were “greedy political merchants” bent on frustrating Otti after he had outsmarted them in their failed bid to sell the state governorship ticket to the preferred aspirant of the state government.

“In a leaked conversation involving the leaders of the renegades in Abia, they discussed how they were going to collect money from the PDP-led Abia State Government for the hatchet job,” he said.

According to him, the beneficiaries of the move to withdraw the petition went to work, alleging that it was after collecting “the necessary financial settlement that they filed their frivolous suit in court seeking the withdrawal of APGA from the governorship case.”

“To show that their destructive bond with the enemies of APGA is still strong, they hired a well known PDP man and agent of the state government as their lawyer. The said lawyer was the PDP’s local government agent in the governorship election and appeared as a witness for PDP against APGA in the ongoing governorship case.”

Nonetheless Okoro maintained that APGA remained confident that Otti would still get justice at the tribunal despite the antics of his enemies and their collaborators, who were bent on undermining his chances.