Aide claims Umahi cleared to contest fresh APC-ordered senatorial primary

Ebonyi State Governor, David Umahi, has been cleared to contest in a fresh primaries for Ebonyi South senatorial district ordered by the All Progressives Congress (APC) and scheduled for July 31, according to his Special Assistant on Media and Strategy, Chooks Okoh.

Okoh who disclosed this in a statement he issued on Thursday, said the governor was aware of a “campaign of calumny to curry cheap sympathy from unsuspecting members of the public” being allegedly perpetrated by the presumed winner of the earlier conducted primary, Ann Agom-Eze, against him.

Following the disqualification of Umahi by a Federal High Court in Abakaliki and the declaration of Agom-Eze as the authentic winner of the May 28 primaries, the Chairman of the state chapter of the APC, Chief Stanley Okoro-Emegha, ordered a fresh primary to be held on Sunday, July 31.

In the statement, Okoh said:

“The attention of Ebonyi state Governor has once again been drawn to the bizarre antics of Mrs Ann Agom Eze in her quest to keep deceiving the public and gain unmerited sympathy in a bogus attempt to fly the APC flag as the candidate for Ebonyi South Senatorial zone.

“While the society was still grappling with her perjury tantrums to a revered court of law, she is again employing primitive tactics and resorting to crude self help in a bid to clinch a mandate she has no claim to, anyhow.

“In a most provocative and highly contemptuous letter addressed to the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court Abuja, Mrs Agom Eze went hallucinating about an imaginary court procedure and how it will end, raising disparaging insinuations against the governor in the process.

“The Governor would have ignored the letter and its puerile contents but for the fact that silence is thought to mean consent in our society.

Read also: 2023: Umahi admits buying two nomination forms, explains why court disqualified him

“The general public is enjoined to disregard these deliberate concoctions and misleading rants from a woman who had sought to represent a people, got rejected but is now bent on showing them the rough edges they would have gotten from her.

“For the avoidance of doubt, Governor Umahi is ready for the Ebonyi South Senatorial APC rerun elections set for Sunday, 31st July, 2022 where he hopes to receive the nod of his party to stand in the 2023 elections as their candidate in that senatorial zone.

“The general public, and the judiciary in particular, are enjoined to disregard and totally ignore the veiled blackmail and an attempt to be a senatorial candidate by hook or crook instead of through known standards.”

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