Erstwhile House of Representatives member, Uche Ekwunife who recently left the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the All Progressives Congress (APC), for the purpose of having a platform to contest the Anambra Central Senatorial Election, may have kissed the dust even before the main election, Assistant Editor (North), CHUKS EHIRIM, reports.
Like the proverbial crab, Uche Ekwunife, erstwhile lawmaker from Anambra State, may have waded through many political oceans but seems to have been drowned in the rivers of the All Progressives Congress (APC) politics, especially when it mattered most to her.
With Sharon Ikeazor, former APC interim national women’s leader, clinching the party’s senatorial ticket for Anambra Central penultimate Tuesday, Ekwunife’s desperate desire to return to the Senate from where she was dislodged late last year appears to have finally hit the rock.
Ekwunife, who had been member of the House of Representatives twice and a Senator representing Anambra Central, at least for six months before her tenure was abridged by judicial process, was, by every inch, confident that she was returning to the Senate, through ‘her new party’, until the APC suddenly pulled the rug off her feet recently.
She had purchased the form for the party’s primary election which was supposed to be between her and Ikeazor. In fact, her confidence in going into the race was palpable, a day earlier, after attending the screening at the party’s National Secretariat in Abuja.
Speaking to reporters after, she announced that nobody would stop her from returning to the Senate. Asked what informed her confidence that the party’s ticket and the election proper were hers for the asking, Ekwunife said: “Well, being a member of the House of Representatives for two times and having been a senator for six months before nullification (of the election), I don’t think there is any other qualification that remains which I don’t have. I am quite qualified and I believe that those who voted me in are still there waiting anxiously for me to return to the Senate.”
Reminded that her late entry into the APC may pose a problem to her emergence as the party’s flag-bearer, she dismissed it.
“They have their constitution and the constitution says once you are a member of the party, you enjoy the same privileges and rights enjoyed by older members, except that you are not a member of the executive,” she said.
She, however, displayed some level of political naivety when she pretended not to know that there was a powerful women group put together by her traducers to work against her emergence as APC candidate in the election. When issue came up during her chat with newsmen, Ekwunife dismissed it with a wave of the hand.
Her words: “Well, I am not aware of that development. You are just telling me. And I believe that the first thing anybody should do is to identify with the ward. You know that every politics is local. You go to your ward and identify with the leaders at that level and the state level. When the times comes, you move to a higher level. But you have to first of all identify yourself with the people at your immediate constituency.
“I am not aware of that, but you know that when politics is around the corner, people will begin to sponsor such allegations. But as a politician, I don’t indulge in trivial things. I set my eyes on the ball.
“This is democracy. If you know you are popular, you enter the field to run for election.”
Ekwunife’s entrance in the race seemed to have unsettled the South East Women’s Caucus of the party and the group did not hide its disdain for her.
In a press conference in Abuja, leader of the group and the Deputy National Women Leader, Mrs. Tina Ekwueme-Adike, lamented that female defectors have made it a habit of joining the party without acknowledging the women leaders, stressing that it was wrong in the principles of protocol.
“It is wrong in the principles of protocol that female defectors should decamp from their parties to join APC without acknowledging the women leaders, including the national women leader,” she said.
Ekwueme-Adike further stated that the party’s constitution was specific on the issue of conditions to be fulfilled by defectors and that should be enforced without half measures.
“In the constitution of our great party, there are specifications for membership which I believe that defectors have fulfilled. But it is very sad that the other aspects – the need to queue behind founding members – do not hold for them,” she regretted.
She, however, said that any registered and financial member has rights and privileges, but stressed that the rights of founding members should be paramount and respected.
“New members are highly welcome and we embrace them, not minding their utterances during the electioneering.
“On behalf of my national women leader, the entire APC women leaders, I call on incoming members to do the right thing,” Ekwueme-Adike said.
Aside the strong opposition by APC women against Ekwunife, it is also being speculated that the former National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) who is also contesting the Anambra Central election, Victor Umeh, may also have played a role in seeing that the erstwhile lawmaker did not pick APC ticket for the contest.
Ekwunife had been declared winner of the March 28, 2015 senatorial election; but the Appeal Court, late last year, nullified the election citing irregularities and non-compliance with the Electoral Act.
Since the verdict of the Appeal Court in Enugu, Umeh is alleged to have deployed every opportunity at his disposal to canvass that Ekwunife should not be allowed to contest the re-run. He even went as far as threatening court action against parties that may decide to organise fresh primaries, with a view to bringing in new candidates in the race.
Incidentally, Chris Ngige, who would have been given the former APGA leader a good fight, had taken up a ministerial appointment, thereby bidding farewell to the race.
Political pundits were of the view that all these factors put together played major role in the fall of Ekwunife in the party’s controversial primary. She got the biggest stab in the back from the party which was said to have deceived her by giving her information very late about the election. According to a source within the party, Ekwunife was informed about the primary election very late before the exercise, even as the election was already scheduled for Wednesday morning. Information concerning her disqualification from the race was also skilfully pushed out same Wednesday. The lady was therefore left between getting clearance from the party regarding information about her disqualification and rushing down to Anambra same day, for the election.
The party’s leaders even refused to issue any statement on what transpired during the primary, thereby leaving room for all manner of speculations.
Despite her relative late arrival for the primary, she was said to have come tops in declared results from four out of the seven councils in the district, before the exercise was declared inconclusive.
TheNiche learnt on good authority that the order to halt the primary midway emanated from the party’s national secretariat. The measure was said to have been taken to prevent the former lawmaker claiming that she was denied ticket after winning the primary.
With Ikeazor clutching the party’s ticket, there are insinuations that the former lawmaker, fondly called ‘the Amazon’ by her supporters, may have been edged out of the race. Part of the grouse against her by key members of the party is her frequency of movement from one party to another, often without convincing reasons, except in search of platform to realise her political ambition at any particular time.
Ekwunife had moved from PDP to Peoples Progressive Alliance (PPA), APGA, back to PDP before joining APC, shortly after her dismissal from the Senate by the Appeal Court.
