Imo PDP And Lessons From Ngor-Okpala State Primary Election

By Collins Opurozor

Every institution reveals itself in what it upholds and honours. When the current leadership of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Imo came onboard, the State Chairman, Engr. Charles Ugwuh, never spared a moment in declaring that he had come to rebuild the opposition party. In keeping with this declaration, Ugwuh, a man of peerless integrity, immediately set in motion various measures aimed at expanding the democratic space within the party. Today, there is a PDP in Imo which is a model in democratic organization.

The PDP’s primary election for Ngor Okpala State Constituency By-election has come and gone. Jeff Emeka Nwachukwu emerged victorious and has become the flag bearer of the party. He is a young man who is driven by a sincere desire to speak for his people and to work tirelessly to alleviate mass misery. He is smart, intelligent, competent and parades a long and rich history of probity, Godliness, meekness and genuine love for his people. Every aspiration of Ngor Okpala to have a bold, eloquent, passionate and informed representative in the House of Assembly has found realization in Jeff Nwachukwu.

The outpouring of jubilations throughout Ngor Okpala immediately the outcome of the primary election was announced only proved that the verdict of the delegates was indeed expressive of the people’s collective expectation. More so, the willingness of the other aspirants to accept the result and to pledge to work for the victory of the PDP demonstrated their abiding faith in the fairness and credibility of the process.

In the remotest parts of Ngor Okpala, the success of the PDP in midwifing a process that saw the people’s voices heard, which ensured that votes were not just counted but that votes actually counted, reverberated and was celebrated.

What therefore remains on the lips of every observer is the transparency which the PDP brought to bear in the very competitive exercise. For Imo people, the story that has come out of Ngor Okpala is a fit testimony to the loftiness of the vision of the leadership of the PDP in the state and the party’s fidelity to refined democratic values. In a state where those in power have diminished the quotient of public expectations, dismantled democratic institutions and run the brutal version of fascist rule, the PDP has become a light at the end of the tunnel and an oasis in the desert.

The shame, however, is that the APC in Imo has eventually resorted to fetish rituals over the very same primary election in Ngor Okpala. Every now and then, their leaders are reportedly seen at Alaogbaga Shrine where they administer blood oaths to their delegates. Some other leaders of the party are in Abuja, contriving to impose a candidate on the locals. Worse still, the man whom they are bent on imposing on themselves as candidate currently has a murder case hanging around his neck. This is terrible! By destroying themselves and consuming their own kind, and elevating a killer-in-chief to represent them, the APC in Imo has become like a sea of barracudas.

The forthcoming by-election in Ngor Okpala has become a poster boy for everything wrong with the APC in Imo state. People whose souls are committed to the kingdom of Satan and who besiege dreaded deities to feast happily on human blood cannot be expected to deliver good governance to the people of God. The by-election will therefore serve as a protest by the people of Ngor Okpala, that never will killers, bandits, ritualists and bloodsuckers rule over their land. Never!

Imo people have reasons to keep faith with the PDP, aware that with the party all dreams for a great Imo which brims with peace, equity and progress and in which the people have a voice and a stake in the process of governance shall come to fruition. Every institution reveals itself in what it upholds and honours.