Rigging: Former CNPP chair, ex-gov Kalu trade words in Abia

A former Chairman of the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties in Abia State, Prince Kingsley Nkume, and an erstwhile Governor of the state, Dr. Orji Uzo Kalu, have disagreed over the problem of election rigging in the state.
Nkume alleged that the former governor entrenched election rigging in Abia State.
But in a swift reaction, the Media Adviser (South East) to Kalu, Hon. Maduka Okoro, denied the allegation, describing it as a figment of the imagination of an infantile mind.
Nkume had stirred the hornet’s nest while speaking to our correspondent in Isiala, the headquarters of Ikwuano Local Government Area of the state, accusing Kalu of entrenching the culture of rigging during elections in the state.
The former CNPP chairman added that the former governor’s electoral victories that saw him serving for two terms as the state’s chief executive were actually rigged.
“He entrenched rigging in the state. He, it was, also, who planted and nurtured the idea of a candidate prevailing on the commission to declare him victorious and to let his opponent go to court,” Nkume alleged.
He accused Kalu of conniving with the Independent National Electoral Commission to rob Prince Vincent Ogbulafor of the defunct All Peoples Party of victory in the 1999 governorship election.
Nkume also deplored the defection of some politicians from the state from other political parties to the All Progressives Congress, saying it was an exercise in futility.
“It is also an effort by them to escape from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, for various cases of mismanagement of public funds,” he said.
Insisting that majority of them had lost their electoral values in their wards, he noted that come 2019, Governor Okezie Ikpeazu of the Peoples Democratic Party would be returned to office.
Refuting the rigging allegation against former Abia governor, Okoro argued that Kalu’s integrity was not in doubt.
He added that the former governor had more meaningful things to think about, particularly the welfare of the people, than engaging in election rigging.
Okoro queried the rationale behind the former CNPP chairman’s allegations, saying his principal’s main concern now was how to join hands with other eminent citizens of the state to move Abia forward.
“Are we talking about the past or the future? Let us talk about what can be done for the betterment of the people of the state. They have had enough of this failed government,” he
argued.
Okoro assured that come 2019, those being derided now as defecting to the ruling APC to escape prosecution by the EFCC, would take over the Abia State Government House.