Benjamin Nworie in Abakaliki
Barely 24 hours after the reconciliatory meeting between President Muhammadu Buhari and the warring factions of the Ebonyi State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) ended in deadlock, the leadership of the All Progressives Youth Vanguard in the state has blamed the Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu and the APC National Chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, for the leadership crisis in the state party.
The national leader of the group, Mr. Frank Ngwu, in a statement threatened that group would protest against Oyegun’s rescheduled visit to the state on Friday, stressing that the party would not honour his visits.
He specifically berated Onu for using his closeness with the presidency and party’s national leadership to foment troubles in the party, while Oyegun has made himself a willing tool to destabilise the party in the state.
The group also passed vote of no confidence on the national chairman, noting that he is incompetent to head the party and further urged him to resign so as to redeem the image of the party.
He alleged that Onu teamed up with the defectors from the Labour Party (LP) to hijack the party’s structure from the state Chairman, Ben Nwobasi, by appointing the erstwhile state Deputy Chairman, Eze Nwachukwu, as the acting state chairman of the party against a subsisting court injunction.
Nwachukwu had claimed that the crisis has been resolved but Nwobasi disputed that, claiming that there was still a subsisting court injunction restraining the party from tampering with his election as the state chairman.
The group also lamented that Onu has not made any effort to wade into the chairmanship crisis which has further split the party into other factions thereby creating confusion on the genuine leadership of the party.
The leader warned that the group would mobilise the teeming members of the party to protest against the visit and further charged security agents to stop the planned visit to avoid breach of public peace, as they would resist all attempt to cause more crisis in the party which his visit portends.
Ngwu said: “We will not allow Oyegun to come to Ebonyi State. The crisis in Ebonyi APC revolves around Onu and Oyegun. The duo is making business with the party in the state. Onu has refused to give peace a chance. Two of them are bent on removing our elected chairman, Nwobasi. To tell you that Oyegun is either confused or has commercialised APC in Ebonyi, when some moneybag visited him, he authored a letter on February 23, 2017 appointing Nwachukwu as the state acting chairman. When contempt proceeding was served on him, he quickly authorised another letter on April 25 withdrawing his initial letter.
“We cannot allow such character to come and cause mayhem in the state because of his double standard. We want him to resolve the crisis before coming to Ebonyi State otherwise we will resist him from stepping his foot into Ebonyi soil. His leadership incompetence has further exacerbated the crisis in our state chapter of APC and this has endangered the strength of our party in the state.â€
He therefore noted that the state chapter of APC would not continue to relate with him as its national chairman until he obeys the court injunction which restrained him from tampering with the 2014 state congress which elected Nwobasi and the state working committee of which Nwachukwu was Nwobasi’s deputy.
