Ward congress didn’t hold in C/River – Senator Eno

Chairman Senate Committee on Finance, Senator John Owan Eno, has lamented efforts by some individuals within the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Cross River state, to hijack its structure, adding that last Saturday’s ward congress never took place in the state.

The Senator representing Cross River Central, however, warned the Party National Leadership to disregard any attempt by some persons to tell them the contrary.

Also, some protester from Kaduna state took protest to the national secretariat of APC, saying the party was dying in the state.

Some of the placards carried by the protesters read: ‘Baba, please call Kiriku to order’, ‘APC is dying in Kaduna’, ‘EFCC, investigate Oyegun and return our money’, and ‘EFCC come to our aid, the Kaduna people’. Others reads: ‘Democracy is about people and not committee of friends’, ‘say no to kiriku in 2019’, ‘Congress must hold in Kaduna’, ‘affirmation is undemocratic’, ‘Oyegun should go’, ‘no APC Ward congress in Kaduna’, ‘we stand with Baba Buhari for 2019’, among others.

Speaking at a news conference on Monday in Abuja, Senator Eno, said the committee sent to his state had been compromised, calling on the National Secretarial to appoint another congress panel who will conduct a credible, free and fair ward congress in the state.

According to him, when it was obvious that the ward congress could not hold on Saturday, all the stakeholders including him drove to the office of the Commissioner of Police in the state where they signed to keep the materials sent from the national secretariat with the police.

When asked what his next step of action will be, the lawmaker said: “It will be shameful that any list of delegates and elected people comes out of the last Saturday’s exercise in the state when the result sheets and other materials from the national headquarters are in the safe custody of the Nigerian police, I don’t think it will happen but if it does happen I believe the entire stakeholders will meet to agree on the next line of action”.

In his speech titled ‘shame of a congress committee panel,’ the lawmaker explained that: “When we expected that the congress panel had left Cross River yesterday (Sunday), we later got another story that the congresses were going on.

“Now there are lot of report about the fact that they have tried to organize what they called congresses in the cause of yesterday (Saturday) and we are just wondering where they are getting the result or whatever, so those are the issues we need to prepare our minds for, that today or tomorrow if the result of congresses from Cross River comes to the National Secretariat, there will be a lot of pertinent questions that will be answered; where they got those results, Where the congress was held and so on”, he said.