• Says Enugu APC leaders are ‘desperate job’
The Enugu Peoples Forum has faulted the state chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on the letter by the Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, calling the attention of the international community to what he described as endangerment of democracy and trumped up forgery charges against him, the Senate President, and two others.
Reacting to the claim by the state APC that Nigeria was a sovereign nation, hence Ekweremadu ought not to involve the international community in her internal affairs, the group maintained that Nigeria was not only a member of a global village, but also a beneficiary of the generosity of the international community.
In a statement jointly signed by the leaders of the group in the three senatorial districts of the state, namely Hon. Okey Ozoani, Hon. Frank Anioma, and Hon. Martin Oloto, the group said unlike the APC, which sold lies to the world and sabotaged the war against insurgency through arms sales blockade, Ekweremadu had acted responsibly as a former Speaker of the ECOWAS Parliament.
The forum wondered why the Enugu APC, which had kept mute all along in the face of alleged incessant maiming and killings by marauding herdsmen as well as the mowing of unarmed young protesters in the South-east has suddenly found its.
Insisting that the endangerment of democracy in Nigeria holds grave consequences for Africa, the Forum added: “Democracy is endangered when the executive refuses to obey court orders; when virtually every election, especially in the strongholds of the opposition, is rendered inconclusive; when the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) abuses his office and court process for partisan and other vested interests; when the AGF defies parliamentary summons and joint resolutions of the National Assembly; and worst of all, when we go back to the military days of trumped-up charges against people who hold dissenting views with the aim of taking over the parliament, which is the symbol of democracy.”
The EPF emphasised that whereas Ekweremadu merely called the attention and reflection of the international community on the state of the nation, it would go farther by “requesting the international community, which has invested so much in enthroning and sustaining Nigeria’s democracy to take steps to arrest the drift of the nation’s democracy.”
The group said the people of South-east have never had it so bad since the end of the civil war, describing the Enugu APC leadership as “desperate job seekers and insufferable hypocrites” working against the larger Igbo interest.
The forum, however, advised them not to hope for a better treatment than other party leaders in the region considered to have given the present administration only five per cent of its winning votes.
They listed Chief Ogbonnaya Onu, Chief Chris Ngige, Prof Anthony Onwuka, and Mr. Osita Okechukwu as APC chieftains of South-east extraction who ended up with mere third class ministries, junior minister, and a moribund parastatal despite their well-known efforts at enthroning the APC government.
