As Araraume unveils agenda for Imo

BY CLIFFORD NDUJIHE,

LAGOS-LEADERS of Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, have boasted that they would win 15 governorship seats in April polls, given the performance of ACN governors and level of political footwork and engineering they have made.

Currently, the party has four states, namely Lagos, Edo, Ekiti and Osun, and has fielded a host of strong governorship candidates, most of whom defected from the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in many states of the country.

The leaders, including Chief Tom Ikimi, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Chief Achike Udenwa, spoke at a fund-raising dinner of the party’s Imo State governorship candidate, Senator Ifeanyi Araraume, at Golden Gate Restaurant, Ikoyi, Lagos.

Ikimi, who noted that Tinubu had done a yeoman’s job to ensure the survival of ACN, said testimonies of Governor Babatunde Fashola’s achievements in Lagos were re-echoing all over the country and would translate to more victories for the party.

He said: “Lagos was the first state we won. It was followed by Edo and then Ekiti and Osun. As we speak, my calculation is we will have nothing less than 12 to 15 states after 2011 polls. These new states, I predict with certainty, one of them will be Imo. I won’t take the risk to come from northern Edo for this fund-raising dinner, if I thought it was a fruitless venture. The mission we have embarked upon is to rescue Imo.” 

Disclosing that he had known Araraume for about 25 years, Ikimi said by going against Araraume, Governor Ikedi Ohakim of Imo State had bitten the fingers that fed him. How: “I knew Ohakim in 1990-91. It was Araraume who introduced late Senator Evan Enwerem to me and I supported him to be Imo governor under the National Republican Convention, NRC. Araraume introduced Ohakim to me to introduce him to Enwerem to make him a commissioner.”