A civil society group, the Enugu Good Governance Group, E-3G, has asked the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to sanction the Enugu State chapter of All Progressives Congress (APC), its governorship candidate, Uche Nnaji, and the Chairman, Ugochukwu Agballah, for deceiving Enugu people with a fake deputy governorship candidate.
The group said the final amended list of candidates for the 2023 governorship election published by INEC on its website on January 30, 2023 had further confirmed the Enugu APC was parading a fake deputy governorship candidate in George Ogara.
The group said the reason for parading Ogara, who hails from Enugu North zone as the deputy governorship candidate was to hide the fact that the real deputy governorship candidate of the APC, Robert Ngwu, and the governorship candidate, Uche Nnaji, hail from Enugu East senatorial zone.
In a statement, yesterday, by its National Coordinator, Odinaka Okechukwu, the group said it, therefore, petitioned the INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, to stop what it called “fraudulent governorship campaigns by the Enugu State chapter of the APC.
“The INEC published the final list of candidates for governorship and state House of Assembly elections on October 4, 2022, which had the name of Nnaji, serial number 277, as the governorship candidate of the APC in Enugu, and Ngwu, serial number 778, as the deputy governorship candidate.
“On January 30, 2023, INEC published the ‘amended list of final candidates pursuant to court orders, death, and corrections of errors made by political parties’ in line with Section 287 of the 1999 Constitution.
“We observed that the changes did not affect any political party in Enugu, hence Ngwu remains the deputy governorship candidate of the Enugu APC.
“We, therefore, wonder why the Enugu APC has continued to deceive the electorate by parading a fake deputy governorship candidate in the person of Ogara.
“We hold that it is fraudulent, ignoble, antidemocratic, and must be immediately sanctioned by the INEC,” the group said.