•Inaugurates party’s campaign council
Imo State Governor Hope Uzodimma has urged chieftains of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to move to their wards and communities and sensitise the people for the victory of the party’s presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.
He said political patronage in his administration would henceforth be based on the ability of party members to deliver their wards at the polls.
The governor spoke when he inaugurated the 2023 state campaign council of the APC in Owerri, which has his deputy, Prof Placid Njoku, as chairman.
He said: “Go and convince our people who are yet to be convinced of our ability and readiness to improve their welfare that there is life and hope in the APC. Remain faithful and steadfast. There should be no divided loyalty among you.”
Warning those with sinister motives to acquire power through the short cut, the governor said: “Let me remind those who are criminally plotting to bulldoze their way into power by all means and at all costs that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has adopted a technology that has no room for electoral fraud. So, let us behave ourselves and be committed to true democracy because at the end of the day, somebody must win and somebody must lose.”
With a mantra of ‘Operation deliver your wards and polling units’, the governor said “political patronage in my administration will henceforth be based on the ability of party members to deliver their wards at the polls.”
He hoped that the legacies of President Muhammadu Buhari across the country, especially in the Southeast, would earn the APC a landslide victory in all stages of the coming elections.
Uzodimma named such legacies as the establishment of a medical school for the Federal University of Technology Owerri (FUTO), upgrading of FMC Owerri and Alvan Ikoku Federal College of Education as a university teaching hospital and Federal University of Education accordingly, completion of the second Niger Bridge, Onitsha, establishment of a naval base in Oguta in addition to signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the dredging of Oguta Lake to a seaport.
He said the feats, among others, accomplished by the president, had been on the drawing board since the end of the civil war in 1970, but were ignored by successive administrations.
The governor advised the council, which comprised elected and appointed party officials, members of the state executive council, those of the House of Assembly, who were of the APC political family, council sole administrators, among others, to troop to the grassroots and sensitise the people on the need to vote massively for the APC and to replicate the same in their areas of jurisdiction.
Responding, a chieftain of the party, Emma Ibediro, a lawyer, hailed the governor for the good work he has been doing, saying the people are behind him to ensure the party wins the elections.