Ebonyi State Governor Dave Umahi has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to seek re-election in 2019. Umahi is a member of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and contested on the platform of the PDP.
The governor spoke on Thursday during an interview with the State House correspondents during his visit to the President at the Aso Rock Villa, Abuja.
Buhari is scheduled to visit Ebonyi State next week and the governor was at the Villa to confirm the date for the visit. When asked if the President had confided in him that he would run for a second term, Umahi said that since it was his own desire to seek a second term as governor, he also wished the President to do the same thing.
He said, “Any first term governor would want to go for second term. Whatever you wish yourself, you should be honest enough to wish another person the same.
“Since Mr. President is on his first term and I am on my first term, it is my wish to re-contest and I will as well wish the President the same thing: to re-contest.”
The governor noted that the state government was fully prepared to receive the President. “We are fully prepared for the visit. We pleaded with Mr. President for the visit and before then, we have been preparing, we are fully prepared,” he said.
The governor disclosed that during his visit, Buhari will inaugurate a number of projects. The governor also revealed that several projects had been lined up for inauguration by the President during the visit.
According to the governor, the twin flyovers that is built across the African trans-atlantic road running from Enugu to Cameroun passing through Ebonyi State will be among the projects to be inaugurated by the president.
Umahi said, “We have quite a lot of projects that we have executed within the past two and the half years. We have three numbers of twin flyovers that is built across the African trans-atlantic road running from Enugu to Cameroun passing through Ebonyi State.
“So we have to build three twin flyover to decongest traffic on that road, each of the twin flyover is 700 metre length. We have completed two and the third one is 80 per cent done, Mr. President will commission the two.
We also have a mall what we call Ebonyi Mall that is modelled after the famous Dubai Mall.’’ He stated that the president would lay a foundation stone for the mall during the visit.
Umahi expressed the hope that President Buhari would inaugurate the Mall project when he returned to the state for re-election campaign in the next 12 months.
“Also we are building a tunnel that dovetails into a flyover that is parallel to the existing flyover, that particular junction that is called Akanu Ibiam junction.
“We want Mr. President to lay the foundation stone and that flyover bridge will be named after Mr. President and we are sure to finish that project in the next 12 months, Mr. President will also come back, he will be commissioning it when he comes back for his campaigns.’’
Meanwhile, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has denied allegations that it is planning to hound 50 PDP members to jail in the course of the forthcoming Anambra State governorship election, describing such allegations as unfounded.
According to the party, the APC has no interest in the arrest of anybody, but rather that its interest is in winning the election. Making the clarifications while speaking to correspondents at the party secretariat in Abuja on Thursday, the National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, said: “A couple of former governors were invited by the EFCC for questioning on their financial conduct during their tenure in office.
One way to preempt that is to claim that there is a threat to muscle the opposition.” He also noted that the APC has no hands in the arrest of former political office holders whether belonging to the opposition political parties or even its members, as the party neither has the power to arrest anyone or order any arrest because its only concern as a political party is to win elections and not arresting anyone.
“I don’t know who is making that allegation and it would have been better that the person reel out the names in the list of persons to be arrested. “I have said that as a political party, we don’t arrest and if anybody has issues with the power to arrest, the person should go and deal with it instead of politicising it.
We are concerned with the art of winning elections as a party not arresting anybody,” he added. Speaking on how the party was working towards winning the election, Abdullahi said: “Whenever we go into primaries as in the case of Anambra where we had 12 aspirants, there must be one level of acrimony or the other, no matter the effort you make.
But what we have done was to get everybody to rally round the candidate. “Yes, there will be residual issues, but I can tell you that all of us are working together and have all lined up behind our candidate Dr. Tony Nwoye to ensure that we win the election in the state.
“The issue of party members not working together does not arise; all party faithful including the Minister of Labour, Dr Chris Ngige, who is the leader of the party in the state are together and all of us are working to ensure victory for the party.
“The National Campaign chairman, Mohammed Abubakar, governor of Bauchi State, has been meeting with all stakeholders up till yesterday (Wednesday), we were still meeting to strategise and of course you know that the President will be visiting the grand finale of the campaign.
“So, all of us are working to ensure victory, because the state is very important to the party and we understand the significance of the state election.
We are pulling everything together and everybody is working together to ensure success in Anambra State,” he said. When asked about the plans by the party to use security agencies to rig the state election, Abdullahi said: “We believe strongly that the speculations of APC deploring soldiers to rig Anambra election is just a mere rumour, because there is no evidence to that and if anybody tells you that the party is planning to deploy Civil Defense, police, soldiers or whatever to do anything in the state, tell the person to provide the evidence.”
The APC spokesman, who also used the opportunity to speak on the recently presented 2018 budget by President Buhari, noted that the rancour and acrimony that attended the previous budgets will no more be observed, because of the harmonious relationship between the Executive and the Legislature.
He added that the party now has commitment to invest in economically productive sectors in the coming year. “We are very delighted that the 2018 budget was presented and as we can see, there is a renewed commitment to invest in economically productive sectors in the coming year.
“I have read a couple of analysis on the budget and noticed that yes, there are different options but we, as a party are happy with the budget presented and the promises by the National Assembly to give the budget speedy assessment.
“We are very happy also that they have promised speedy review of the budget and the passage as soon as possible. What excites us most was that the kind of rancour and acrimony that attended the previous budget given the relationship between the legislature and the executive is not going to happen again, the relationship has been mended.
We are now confident as a party that the two arms of government will work smoothly and closely going forward. We are happy that we are going to start next year in a more harmonious and coordinated manner,” he said.
