A candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in the Anambra State November 6 governorship poll, Valentine Ozigbo, has declared that he is still in the governorship race.
According to him, the exclusion of the party from the list published by the Independent National Electoral Commission on Friday is only a temporary development.
He added that all human and other resources will be deployed to ensure that the court order which ruled him and his party out of the cleared list released by INEC is vacated.
He made the submission on Saturday while reacting to his exclusion from the list of cleared candidates for the 2021 Anambra governorship polls.
He explained in a statement by media aide, Aziza Uko that all issues will be resolved soon to enable INEC to clear him and for campaigns to begin.
The statement reads in part: “It is on record that the Peoples Democratic Party had the most credible party primary ahead of the November 6 Anambra State governorship election.
“Most of the aspirants, present at the primary venue on June 26, 2021, spontaneously congratulated Ozigbo once he was declared the winner. They went on to formally publish their congratulations to him as the elected candidate of the party.
“The development, in which aspirants congratulate the elected candidate, is novel in Anambra party politics. It attests to the acceptability of the candidacy of Valentine Ozigbo and the transparency of the process from which he emerged.
“We acknowledge that Mr Ozigbo is still reaching out in dialogue to few aspirants who feel aggrieved. At the end of the process, the PDP will emerge as one family under one big umbrella that accommodates everyone.
“We confirm that the PDP has forwarded only the name of Mr Valentine Ozigbo as its candidate for the 2021 Governorship Election to INEC. We also confirm that he had submitted his credentials to INEC and that all the procedural necessities that should follow before INEC’s publication of the list of candidates had been completed.
“Mr Valentine Ozigbo appreciates the interests of his teeming supporters and Ndi Anambra as a whole over the current situation. He calls on them to keep faith with the process as all is under control.”
“The issues will be resolved in no time and open the space for a one-of-a-kind campaign on issues that were top on the minds of Ndi Anambra with regards to their yearnings for transformational leadership that will usher in a new era of peace and progress to the
State.”
Meanwhile, some Northern lawmakers have stated the reason why the region deserves to retain the presidency in 2023.
Recall that the Southern Governors Forum had demanded that the presidency shifts to the South in the spirit of fairness, equity, and justice.
Addressing a press conference on Friday, Speaker of the Kogi State House of Assembly, Matthew Kolawole, said that the south had ruled for 14 years while the north would have ruled for 10 years at the end of President Muhammadu Buhari’s tenure.
This article was originally published on Nigeria News