One of the aspirants said to have endorsed the adoption of Chukwuma Soludo as the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the 2010 Anambra State governorship election has dissociated himself from the claim.
Olisa Metu, the National Vice Chairman, South East, of the PDP had, last week, told the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) at the National Secretariat of the party that 36 former aspirants had supported the candidature of Mr. Soludo during his public presentation as the party’s candidate and the presentation of its flag to him.
But Kenneth Odidika, a former aspirant who was at the occasion, said he is not in support of the action of the party and “couldn’t have supported illegality”. The aspirant, who said he was tricked into attending the event by Mr. Metu, had refused to stand up when the National Chairman of the party, Vincent Ogbulafor, asked all the aspirants in support of Soludo’s candidacy to stand up.
Mr. Odidika said he was never a party to the adoption of Soludo as the party’s candidate and that he stands by the resolve of other aspirants that the party’s candidate must not be imposed but produced through a credible state congress.
He described the attempt to add his name to those that had endorsed soludo as a mischief, which he said he would not be a party to.
Ekwueme is unwanted
“The presentation of Soludo as the party’s candidate was a fraud, considering the fact that the last discussion between the aspirants and members of the NWC during the botched meeting, called a week ago to choose the party’s candidate, was that the name of Alex Ekwueme would be submitted to Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), to save the party from losing out in the race and to beat the deadline issued by INEC,” he said.
He said the leadership of the party played a fast one on the aspirants as they left the venue of the meeting with a promise to get back to them before announcing the final decision of the party on the knotty issue. He said the next thing the aspirants heard was the committee coming out to announce the name of Mr. Soludo and Emmanuel Anosike as the party’s governorship and deputy governorship candidates, respectively.
Mr. Odidika, in exonerating himself from the adoption of the former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, said because of his vast background in the law profession, he found it impossible to “align myself with deliberate illegality and unruly conduct and, therefore, I reject the process and result as currently peddled”.
He said further that he will resist efforts to drag his name into the crowd that has been going around saying that Soludo has been finally accepted by the other aspirants.
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