The leadership crisis rocking the Enugu State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) deepened yesterday as its chieftains bickered over whether or not its state Chairman, Ugochukwu Agballah, should be removed.
While former Senate President, Ken Nnamani, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffery Onyeama, former governor, Sullivan Chime, and Chief Gbazueagu Nweke, among others, who met in Enugu, yesterday, insisted that Agballah should step down for the setting up of a caretaker committee to midwife the affairs of the party until elections. However, the governorship candidate of the party, Uche Nnaji, and forum of state and local government executives of the party, insisted that Agballah should remain the state chairman.
At a stakeholders’ meeting in Enugu, attended by Nnamani, Onyeama, Chime, Nweke and others, they restated the demand of the national leadership of the party to set up a caretaker committee in the state to run the party to avoid collapse.
Nnamani told the gathering that the party does seem attractive to prospective members due to the leadership style of Agballa. He added that the party chairman had neglected party stalwarts and was, through his conduct, leading the party to a disastrous end.
“We feel the party is not going the way it should go. There is danger ahead as people are leaving our party.
“For only one person to contest our party’s gubernatorial primaries shows we are not attractive and most of our flag bearers are those most unlikely to win elections.
“Candidates of other parties have been coming to us to appeal for our support while ours are not coming,” he said. Nnamani said chieftains would do everything possible to rescue the party and save it from implosion, adding that a fractured party would not do well in elections.
Chime, described Agballa as an impostor bent on destroying the party in the state, stressing that he never supported his candidacy as party chairman due to his antecedents.
Chime said: “It is strange that I do not know any candidate from the House of Assembly to the Senate from my constituency and zone.
“I do not know who our candidates are. For the governorship candidate, I am hearing it as a rumour, though it happens to be the person I knew from a distance.”