APC Speaks On Ekweremadu’s Five Million Membership Registration Claim In 2014

The statement by the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, that he gave the All Progressives Congress N5m during its membership registration in 2014, on Wednesday, was described as a cheap blackmail by the party.

Ben Nwoye, chairman of the party in Enugu State, while addressing journalists at the party’s secretariat, challenged him to name the person he gave the money.

Ekweremadu, while addressing his constituents after they purchased PDP nomination form for him, on Sunday was reported to have claimed that he gave the APC N5m when it was experiencing funding challenges.

However, Nwoye said the party received “with total dismay, the report that he gave N5m to facilitate APC membership registration. That is the biggest political blackmail of the century.”

He said “I was elected chairman of APC in April 2014; I have never as a chairman met with Ike Ekweremadu one on one other than meeting him in public place, in church, where we exchange pleasantries, and by 2014, Senator Ike Ekweremadu was and is still a member of the Peoples Democratic Party; so one wonders why a member of the PDP will be funding registration of members in APC.

“The report attributed to him indicated that he was doing so to help foster democracy; the unfortunate thing is that he never made mention of who he gave the money or where the money exchanged hands; instead he refers to an honourable minister, who at that time was a senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Senator Dr. Chris Ngige. As a democrat and a patriotic citizen, we respect the Deputy Senate President, he is a statesman, and he knows that his comments will be taken seriously and those comments if made are capable of destroying the democracy we all worked for.

“What still shocks me is that if Ike Ekweremadu has admitted funding the opposition, the PDP has refused to punish me, because that would be the height of anti-party; if he was in PDP and spending his money funding registration of members in an opposition party, which at the end of the day, by 2015, the opposition he helped to fund, took over power from his own party. Now one may now have to understand why he connived with some members of the National Assembly and emerged as the Deputy Senate President.

“Assuming, but without admitting that Senator Ike Ekweremadu somehow, somewhere, funded the registration of members of the great opposition party in 2014, it is awkward that he helped the APC to defeat his own party; but our record shows that it is a blackmail, it is falsehood that is geared towards causing disharmony and to undermine our great party, by suggesting that our party had no money to conduct its own registration. it could not be more farther from the truth. The registration done in 2014 and the one in 2017 was fully funded by progressives, those believed in the ability of the party to take over power; nobody solicited fund from Ekweremadu and he never made any overture to give fund.

“A high ranking member of the PDP finds it worthy to admit that he was funding opposition in Enugu State, if you take the story to be true, you ask why?

“We know what happened in 2015, either him or his arrogates sponsored candidates; he may have paid somebody N5m to help him procure a ticket, so that opposition will be oppressed, so that he will remain unchallenged.”

While describing it as “final desperate attempt to continue to hang on to power whether the people like it or not,” he added that “it will not work, the progressives have come together; APC has come to stay in Enugu State.

“Today we have Mr. Surveyor P.C Eze, Chief Gbazuagu Nweke Gbazuagu, Barr. Mrs. Juliet Ibekaku-Nwagu; these are all formidable forces who are prepared to take over from him; any of these persons is more than capable to win him whenever the votes are cast in 2019. So, this a final attempt to blackmail APC and cast a shadow of doubt on the opposition, which has been very strong and formidable in the past 3 years.”