Following the outcome of the senatorial primaries of APGA for Anambra South, the loser, Mrs. Bianca Ojukwu, has claimed that mercenaries have hijacked the party.
Bianca Ojukwu
In a press statement released in Awka, the Anambra State capital on Tuesday, Bianca Ojukwu, the widow of the late Igbo leader, Chukwuemeka Ojukwu, said that the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), will suffer the repercussions of conducting skewed primaries against her and other founding members of the party.
Bianca, who narrated her ordeal at the APGA senatorial primary in the Anambra South district where she lost to Nicholas Ukachukwu, described the exercise as horrible, and alleged that the party had been hijacked by those she described as mercenaries.
She, however, appealed to APGA members not to quit the party, saying that was not the solution to the problem.
Her statement read in part, “As a member of this party’s board of trustees, I am deeply concerned that mercenaries would appear to have hijacked the operations of our party machinery. APGA is today facing an existential threat and the overall image of our party is in tatters.
"We fought hard, but were stopped by forces within this party that were not comfortable with the prospects of my emergence. But God will vindicate the just.
“Our harrowing experiences through this process have exposed to all and sundry, the fault lines of this party and the basic truth that APGA cannot endure unless we do something dramatically different.”
“This will certainly have serious repercussions going into the main elections. I would like to use this opportunity to reach out to all aggrieved members and aspirants who, like myself, have suffered grave injustices under a system which had an abiding responsibility to its members to create an enabling electoral environment.”