By Chinedu Jideofo-Ogbuagu

Let no one deceive himself or herself and others; the offensive petitioners (10 + 4 individuals and like minds) are after campaign/election money from APC National Secretariat and our presidential candidate only in respect of the presidential election.

And it is not as if they intend to win or can win significant votes for the 2023 presidential candidate of APC, even if they were given unrestricted access to the Tinubu campaign war chest.

Their interest is just to collect the money and pocket it – as they did in all previous elections.

Meanwhile, the offensive petitioners and other support group merchants are distracting APC Enugu State’s preparations for 2023 by their going up and down trying to recruit committed APC officials and members across Enugu State, making promises of cash hurls from Tinubu and giving the wrong impression that presidential campaign/election is all that matters to our state party.

But, in Enugu State, what should matter the most is our winning governorship election and also winning a working majority of Enugu State House of Assembly seats.

Of course, we should work to win at least one senatorial seat and a number of House of Representatives seats.

And, of course, Enugu State APC should this time do more than 5% of the votes cast in the presidential election.

With the right strategy and approach to the campaign, “Enugu State APC Campaign Organisation” (the only meaningful support group for Tinubu by Enugu State APC members) should deliver 25%-40% of the votes cast in Enugu State to our presidential candidate.

But that percentage of the votes cast can only be delivered by said “Enugu State APC Campaign Organisation” and not any so-called support groups.

That is the basic point that Chief Uche Nnaji, our governorship candidate, made at Enugu on Sunday, 4th September 2022.

Support groups can work well in some places, but not in APC of Enugu State. We have experience of many years to support this assertion.

In Enugu State APC, support groups are purely mercantilist, self-serving and embarrassingly crisis-ridden.

In order to remove the old crises that led to colossal electoral failures of Enugu State APC, Chief Nnaji, now leader of APC in Enugu State, also made the quite novel and generous offer to our presidential candidate and the National Secretariat of our party to withhold the campaign/election money that should come to Enugu State, that his leadership will deliver the needed votes on our own resources and claim refund of the campaign/election expenses from them afterwards.

What we need to do to win elections – from presidential to state assembly – is to create and operate a formidable single-line and collective “Enugu State APC Campaign Organisation” that will work cohesively, harmoniously and effectively to deliver votes to all APC candidates – with governorship and state assembly candidates at the centre of it all.

Enugu State people are primarily interested in who will occupy the Lion Building and will vote for the presidential and national assembly candidates as complementaries.

The greatest gift that APC Enugu State can give to our dear but traumatized state is to dislodge Ndi-Ebeano PDP from the Lion Building and leadership of Enugu State House of Assembly, which Ndi-Ebeano PDP have occupied since 1999 and degraded Enugu State to a shadow of its former self over the 24 years. Chief Nnaji and his team are on a rescue and rebuild mission.

We could have done it in 2019, but our candidates then were not serious and were not interested in winning election. They had collected APC tickets to sell them to our opponents.

This time, we have a governorship candidate who wants to win the Lion Building; we also have some House of Assembly candidates desirous of winning elections.

They must be helped, not distracted with so-called support groups or any other trading gimmicks.

Creation and effective operation of a collective campaign organisation for all Enugu State APC candidates (including Bola Tinubu) will cut out the ‘trading’ in all forms and focus our minds on the only thing that should matter to us in 2023: winning elections.

Any Enugu State APC members who try to distract/divert us with support groups or any candidates or our campaign officials who try to sell out, should be treated like traitors. We must not waste 2023 as we wasted the previous election years.

Chinedu Jideofo-Ogbuagu is the Convener, South East APC Integrity Group. He can reached via: 07068400040

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