PDP constitutes campaign committee for Anambra gubernatorial poll

….As Oseloka warns against hate campaign
The National Caretaker Committee of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has constituted a Campaign Committee for the Anambra State gubernatorial election scheduled for Nov. 18.

A statement issued by Sen. Ben Obi, National Secretary of the party in Abuja, disclosed that the committee would be led by Governors Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu and Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta states as joint chairmen.

This is even as the governorship candidate of the party in the state, Mr Oseloka Obaze, has warned other PDP candidates, political parties and their supporters to eschew politics of bitterness and campaign of calumny.

Oseloka the party said would flag off his campaign on Monday, at the Dennis Memorial Grammar School (DMGS) Onitsha.

It named the campaign committee members to include Sen. Ike Ekweremadu, Deputy Senate President, all PDP governors, Sen. Ben Obi and all former PDP governors from the South East.

Other members are all former governors from the five other zones of the nation namely Otunba Gbenga Daniel, South West; Chief Celestine Omehia, South South; Alhaji Ibrahim Shema, North West; Alhaji Ibrahim Idris, North Central; and Mr Boni Haruna, North East.

Others include all former governors South South, all former National Assembly members from South East, all members of the Board of Trustees from the South East.

Also in the committee were all former ministers from the South-East, all National Assembly members from the South-East Zone, all South East Zonal Executive Committee members.

It also includes all state chairmen from South-East Zone and Chief Austin Umahi, National Vice Chairman, South East.

However, Oseloka in a statement made available to newsmen in Awka, the state capital decried the alleged smear campaigns targeted at discrediting his person and the process of his emergence as the PDP candidate in the upcoming election in the state.

He said that although political parties and their candidates enjoyed the right to freely sell their manifestoes to the electorate, others reserved the right to seek redress whenever they felt slandered under the guise of campaign.

He said: “My attention has been drawn to various malicious reports on social media platforms aimed at tarnishing my image and credibility as the candidate of the PDP in the forthcoming election.

“Such reckless postings constitute fake news, hate speeches and inciting words,” Obaze said.

According to him, “the malicious reports range from allusions that I fraudulently won the PDP primaries, which was nationally televised, to my going to take an oath of allegiance in a shrine and, of late, that I was admitted in a psychiatric hospital overseas.

“Rather than focus on campaign issues, they resort to campaign of calumny,” he said, adding that there were acceptable limits to propaganda.

The PDP governorship hopeful further said that he remained committed to issue-based campaign, in spite of the fact that he had access to damaging information about other contestants.

“I hereby reiterate my commitment to run a campaign free of fake news, hate speech and calumny. I will dismiss anyone on my team who engages in such unacceptable conducts.

“I hope other governorship candidates will publicly make a similar commitment,” Obaze said. (NAN)