Ebonyi State PDP Chair In Police Net Over An Alleged Forgery On Nomination Form

By Unini Chioma

 

The Federal Capital Territory Abuja Police Command has arrested the Ebonyi State Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, Mr. Tochukwu Okorie, over alleged forgery.

The arrest followed a petition by a human rights lawyer, Mr. Silas Joseph Onu, who accused Okorie of forging nomination forms which brought him (Okorie) to power.

TheNigeriaLawyer learnt that Mr. Silas, who had claimed to be the only qualified candidate for the October 2021 elections of the party, also noted that Okorie was imposed on the party by Senator Pius Anyim Pius.

Onu’s complaints specifically identified the voters card number of Mr. Okorie and 19 of his nominators as fabricated and as such, fake. The PDP Congress Guidelines requires that an aspirant for Chairman must be nominated by, at least, two (2) party members with valid INEC voters card from each Local Government of the State. Ebonyi State has 13 Local Governments and therefore 26 nominators are required for the nomination to be valid. Silas claims that only six (6)nominators have valid voters card and two out of the six (6) also lied about their local government areas. These two (2) who lied about their LGA are from Abakaliki LGA but claimed to be from Afikpo South and Ivo LGA respectively – this act is fraudulently done to achieve the needed spread in the 13 LGAs.

One of the nominators by name Ugama Steven, a lawyer, confidently nominated the accused with incomplete voters card number – very unfortunate and fraudulent intended to mislead.

This is an unfortunate case of political desperation as the nomination forms cited by our correspondent is an incomplete form as the section for affidavit of compliance was clearly not deposed to by Mr. Okorie and one wonders how any screening committee will not observe such a grave omission and still clear a person with an incomplete nomination form. PDP has to do better.

An effort was made to get some clarifications from the PDP national secretariat and a staff who spoke to us on the basis of anonymity stated that the party under this new leadership is not one that encourages bad practices by its members and that was why the Party is cooperating fully with the police to ensure that bad eggs are rooted out of their fold.

In his word “the journey ahead is one that PDP must embark on with a clean hand”.