APGA CRISIS: STAKEHOLDERS DISOWN CALL TO REMOVE UMEH

ONITSHA South Local Council Area Stakeholders Forum of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, has exonerated itself from the call by a group led by Special Adviser to Governor Peter Obi on Markets and Parks, Chief Nwobu Alor, for the resignation of Chief Victor Umeh as the National Chairman of the party.

Rising from an emergency meeting, the stakeholders condemned the call and described it as 'senseless, an act of rascality, and primitive'.

The forum said Alor did not have the support of the state governor, insisting that Alor was on his own in the effort to effect the resignation of Umeh as APGA national chairman.

Leader and spokesman of the stakeholders' forum, Prince Emeka Asoanya, accused Alor of portraying Governor Obi in bad light, by allegedly giving the impression that he had his blessing in the call for the National Chairman of the party to resign.

'We condemn the call by Chief Nwaobu-Alor in its entirety, more so, when he is not a member of the party. We cannot keep quiet while he goes on discrediting Chief Umeh, our National Chairman.

'We urge all well meaning Anambrarians to call him to order. Where was he when the National Chairman spent days in Imo State fighting those who wanted to rig APGA out of the governorship election there?'

He also queried Chief Alor's competence to call for the resignation of Chief Umeh, when the state governor had not made such demand.

The forum said:  'Those whom the Special Adviser was claiming in a television programme to be the party stakeholders in Onitsha and other parts of the state are motor park touts popularly known as Ndimpawa Azu (Back Breakers) and faceless people whom he is using to allegedly unleash terror on the people and genuine traders in the markets in the state.

'When APGA was not wining election in other states of South East, Nwaobu-Alor did not call for the removal of the national chairman.  When Chief Umeh was fighting in the courts  to retrieve the party from those who wanted to destroy it, he never attended any of the court sessions, Imo State Governorship seat is occupied by APGA and National Assembly and State Assembly Seats are being occupied by APGA.'