■ Gov obtains court order, halts election
George Onyejiuwa, Owerri
Imo State Governor, Rochas Okorocha and stakeholders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in his state are set for a showdown in today’s state congress of the party holding nationwide.
Whereas the Acting Secretary of the state chapter of the party, Mr. Obioma Ireagwu said the state Congress will not take place, the stakeholders insist that Governor Rochas Okorocha cannot stop the process scheduled to hold today from taking place.
The Acting Secretary of Imo APC has maintained that no state Congress would hold, saying that the issues concerning the previous congresses of the party in the state were already being contested at the national leadership of the APC.
He urged the leadership of the party to sanction those who allegedly snatched the sensitive materials during the ward congress.
But the spokesman of the Stakeholders and co- convener of the Imo APC Restoration coalition, Dr. Toe Ekechi said that Governor Okorocha cannot stop the party from electing state executives, pointing out that everything has been put in place to ensure that there is a peaceful state congress.
Ekechi who was the former Director, Election planning , monitoring and strategy for the Buhari Presidential Campaign Organisation in 2015 alleged that the Imo governor was trying to destroy the party in the South -East.
He said: “the state Congress of the party will go on tomorrow (Saturday). We would have been surprised if the governor had supported the state congress. He was deviant during the ward and LGA congresses but what happened?
“We are in a process of rescuing the party from the hands of one man who has been holding the party hostage for a while.
“God’s anointing and the anointing of the people, the market traders, the shop owners he destroyed their shops, the pensioners he has kept hungry, the civil servants he has refused to pay complete salaries have left him “.
Dr. Ekechi also disclosed that they have already written to all the security agencies in the state about the state Congress.
“We have written to the security Agencies about the state congress and we will resist any ploy by the governor to truncate the Saturday state Congress. There is jubilation everywhere in Imo State because the people are happy that the party has been taken back to the people.”
Meanwhile, the Imo State government has obtained a Federal High Court injunction in Owerri, ordering the All Progressives Congress APC to refrain from conducting today’s state congress or any other congress in Imo, pending the determination of a suit filed by Barr. Mbagwu Augustine and four others against the APC and 10 others.
The order was served on the APC late Friday. In the exparte motion filed on Thursday, the plaintiffs sought, “an order of interim injunction restraining the 1st to 10th defendants, their privies, servants, agents or any one acting on their behalf or any organ of the AlI Progressives Congress from holding a local government area congress of the All Progressives
Congress or any other congress in Imo State pending the hearing and determination of the motion on notice for interlocutory injunction”.
The court, presided over by Justice A. Lewis Allagoa ordered that, “the respondents are hereby ordered to appear in court on the next adjourned date to show cause why the order should not be granted; “that time is hereby abridged to order that the returned date shall be 22nd May, 2018, provided that the respondents are served 48 hours before then; that all parties in the matter should maintain status quo ante bellum; that the matter stands adjourned to the 22nd day of May, 2018”.