By Nana Ogbodo
As you all would be aware, campaigns for the governorship, House of Assembly, and rescheduled Senatorial elections will wind down tonight. We would like to use this opportunity to thank the good people of our dear state for their immense support during our tours of all the Development Centres in the State.
As you all would be aware, campaigns for the governorship, House of Assembly, and rescheduled Senatorial elections will wind down tonight. We would like to use this opportunity to thank the good people of our dear state for their immense support during our tours of all the Development Centres in the State.
These campaign tours enabled us to feel the pulse of the people. At each stop, we were enthusiastically welcomed by crowds of supporters. And the common refrain was always an emphatic reiteration of their support for the candidate of our party, the Peoples Democratic Party, Dr. Peter Ndubuisi Mbah.
Suffice it to say that their trust in our candidate's governance plan, as enunciated in his programme of action, had further strengthened his resolve to enthrone a society that will both meet the socio-economic expectations of the electorate and elicit pride in them.
So, we're rounding off this campaign without any whiff of doubt that the people are behind us. Indeed, the election of February 25th may have produced an unflattering outcome for our party. But it has to be appraised in the wider context of the geopolitical considerations that shaped the election in the South-East, which, simply, was the common sentiment shared in the region regarding the quest for the presidency. This weekend's election is localized, with far different dynamics, ramifications, and voter expectations.
In all the places we visited, we painstakingly enunciated our candidate's planned policies. It is instructive that we were the first party that published its manifesto, a document that scrupulously outlines the enduring future we intend to build for the state and its people. The content and hope-inspiring messages of our manifesto were always the defining ethos of our campaign. We never succumbed to the ploy to lure us into a contest of ad hominems, as our opponents had craved. We believe that politics is a contest of ideas, not an arena for name-calling.
But it's unfortunate that while we chose to walk an edifying path, our opponents would rather swim in the mud, preferring to indulge in a campaign of calumny, unconscionable fabrications and character smear. It is reminiscent of the Socratic quip: "When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser."
*The PDP has observed with deep disappointment the glee with which the opposition have continued to beat the drums of war, cause apprehension among voters and level reckless and unfounded allegations against the PDP, Enugu State government, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the security agencies, and every decent institution of democracy.*
Indeed we see this disingenuous tendency to skirt around the issues that matter to the Enugu electorate in the Labour Party's candidate, Chijioke Edeoga's perennial scaremongering. Rather than outline a roadmap that offers a sense of his vision for the state, Edeoga seizes every opportunity to paint a siege atmosphere, sow hate with his divisive rhetoric, and make infantile claims against our party, alleging a phantom plan to perpetrate violence on election day. Ironically, he has ignored the fact that it was Okey Ezea, a prominent member of his party, who stated openly that this election is a "do-or-die" affair.
We reiterate our call for security agencies to take necessary actions to curb whatever untoward plans these Labour Party war drum beaters may have contrived to visit mayhem on the electorate. We know their collaborators, including two former ministers from the state, who are equally the godfathers of the Labour Party candidate. This is an open secret. They have deployed their contacts and vast resources to procure instruments of war for an otherwise civic function as simple as an election.
*We have it on good authority that the opposition, notably the Labour Party, has amassed arms, ammunitions, and ‘angels’ of death in several boundary communities in three neighbouring states from where they intend to deploy in the early hours of March 18. We also have it on good authority that the Labour Party has perfected plans to intimidate and compel voters in Enugu North Senatorial District to cast their ballots for the Labour Party at gunpoint. To the desperate opposition, the March 18 election has become a case of your vote or your life.*
It is important to emphasize that in the last seven and half years of the Governor Ugwuanyi administration of which Edeoga was a prominent member, Enugu was never regarded as a volatile state in all the elections we have had. It is thus baffling to imagine the desperation that has pushed Edeoga to cast an administration he was a part of, in the odious image that he is seeking to establish.
Such character is emblematic of politicians, who barely have anything to offer. Unlike our candidate, who has held his audience spellbound in the intellectual exploration of possibilities that abound in our state, as was evident recently at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and the Enugu State University of Science and Technology, Edeoga has demonstrated a shocking lack of intellectual depth. Having neither content nor erudition, he could only manage to appal the students with his scaremongering.
We urge the Enugu electorate to ignore all such theatrics and come out in their numbers to vote on Saturday. The stakes in this election are quite clear. It's a choice between mere political posturing that owes allegiance to a section and a commitment to a secure and prosperous future for all. Our candidate represents the latter. We therefore hereby urge Ndi Enugu to take ownership of this exciting journey to the future by coming out en masse to vote for Dr. Peter Ndubuisi Mbah to drive the this process.
Thank you.
Nana Ogbodo
Director of Communications/Spokesman
