By Emmanuel Ugwu-Nwogo:
A group from among the kinsmen of the Governor of Abia State, Mr. Okezie Ikpeazu, has kicked against cash and material donations made to the governorship candidate of the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), Professor Uche Ikonne.
Some select members of PDP from Obingwa had on September 19, 2022, reportedly donated huge cash, vehicles and food stuff to assist Ikonne in his campaigns to win the 2023 governorship poll and succeed Ikpeazu, his godfather.
But a group from the governor’s local government under the banner of Obingwa Concerned Citizens (OCC), has criticized the donations, saying that they were self-serving and smacked of insensitivity to the impoverished Abia masses.
The OCC explained that it frowned at the donations by Obingwa politicians, because they constituted “man’s inhumanity to man and misplaced priority all in a bid to impose on the people another burden that would last for eight years.”
Among the contentious gifts allegedly donated to the PDP governorship flag bearer were N37 million cash, 100 bags of rice, a life cow, stock fish, campaign materials and two Toyata Sienna minivan valued at over N100 million.
In a statement that was jointly signed by the Chairman and Secretary of OCC, Mr. Onyenkwere Onyeizu and Mr. Wisdom Ahukanna, respectively, the group lamented that politicians could still afford to indulge in frivolities of misplaced priority to satisfy the governor and his favoured candidate.
According to the OCC, even in the governor’s local government, “citizens are languishing in abject poverty and lacking basic necessities of life while the political elites are throwing the needed resources on frivolities.
“This is coming from leaders of a local government where youths, men and women are suffering from abject poverty, deplorable road conditions, including the road leading to the house of the first citizen of the state, which has remained under construction for seven years now with lot of patch works to the rescue as always.
“The people of this LGA have a mind boggling rural disconnection arising from dilapidated infrastructure, uncompleted projects and non-existing social amenities.”
It expressed surprise that “a local government as ours could have such huge sum of money for donation to an anointed party candidate while her people suffer in pains and penury.”
