Signs that Mbaise Nation is not unanimously disposed to the emergence of Rt. Hon. Emeka Ihedioha as the next Governor of Imo State, emerged last Saturday November 1, 2014, at Enyiogugu, in his hometown of Aboh Mbaise LGA.
Emeka Ihedioha who they described as having a tenacity and penchant for electoral fraud and malpractices, had invaded the venue of the farce called PDP delegates election at Enyiogugu with both thugs and heavily armed security personnel.
However they met their match in another set of security personnel and PDP stalwarts commended by Distinguished Senator Chris N.D. Anyanwu who incidentally hails from the area. As if on rampage and in attempt to use his security apparatus to overwhelm and intimidate the rival Senator, Rt. Hon. Emeka Ihedioha attempted to hijack the exercise. However Enyiogugu PDP youths gave him a piece of the ice when they chased him and his crowd of market naked dancers away booing at him and chanting war songs.
Some of their protest songs include, “Emeka Ihedioha; leave Enyiogugu ward alone, Emeka Ihedioha, you have no right to be at Enyiogugu, far away from your Mbutu Okohia Ward, on election day, we no go greeoo, we no go gree to an election rigger”.
With the angry youths and other PDP members rushing and booing at Emeka Ihedioha, the exercise was scuttled hence no delegate election was held at Enyiogugu. At Ikenegbu Primary School Owerri, many prospective voters turned out but no official or electoral materials were available to even accredit them.
The same was the ugly situation at Obohia in Ahiazu Mbaise LGA and New Owerri Wards I and II. When our roving reporter visited the polling booths, card carrying members of PDP were seen assembling together for the delegate primary election but up till 4 P.M no single electoral official or materials arrived the venue for the exercise.
At Obohia, when the electoral officer arrived in a car belonging to one of the PDP leaders who was not contesting for the delegate election, he was so afraid of disembarking from the car for fear of being lynched should he go ahead to announce the result of a harmonized list already drawn for him. Rather than call for delegate election under option A4. He later ran away leaving the car behind, to heaven knows where, and probably perfected the now generally acknowledged doctoring of the delegates election which are presently bandied about and brandished as the outcome of the election.
In an apparent reaction to the claims that Hon. Emeka Ihedioha invaded Enyiogugu Ward with his rampaging band of thugs and trigger hungry police men as if going to the war front, the Director-General of Ihedioha Campaign Organization, Chris Okewulonu while acknowledging that Emeka Ihedioha indeed left his Mbutu Okohia Ward, for Enyiogugu, denied that he was at Enyiogugu to rig the delegates election.
Okewulonu however boasted that his principal’s loyalists trounced Senator Chris Anyanwu’s candidates in her ward even when the crowd booed at Ihedioha and forced the election to come to an abrupt end without producing any result as reported.
Courtesy: Community Watchdog Newspaper
