By Tony Edike
ENUGU—Protests have continued to trail the outcome of last Thursday’s councillorship primary elections of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Enugu State as some stakeholders of the party were accused of imposing unpopular candidates on the party.

One of such protests took place at Agbani, Nkanu West Local Government Area of Enugu State, Saturday, where some aggrieved youths stormed the Agbani market protesting the attempt by a leading PDP stakeholder from the area  to impose an unpopular councillorship candidate on the people.

The protests coincided with Saturday’s chairmanship primary elections in 17 council areas of the state in which 220 aspirants jostled for 17 seats.

President, Agbani Youth General Assembly, Mr. Chukwu Chika, who briefed newsmen after the protest, alleged  intimidation going on in Agbani ward over sharing modalities for public positions.

He explained that out of 26 families and eight villages in Agbani ward, only one family, Umu Ogbodo Ejim of Amakpu village, had more than 90 percentage of the political appointments given to Agbani.

He blamed the injustice against the people on a former Secretary to the Enugu State Government (SSG) from the area.

“In the councillorship primaries he brought an unpopular candidate Monday Okenwa, who was defeated by Emmanuel Uchenna Oko.  But he has vowed that over his dead body would that voting stand boasting that he will use his powers and influence to ensure his candidate emerged as councilor from the Ward.

“Thus we are calling on the governor and the state party executive not to allow this injustice to continue against our people; it is a taboo, and a sacrilege in our community,” Oko said.

Also speaking, Mr. Edeani Chidozie and Chief Nwobodo Agbo noted that the community has decided to entrench equity and fairness, thus “we chose a candidate from Obeagu village which has never had the opportunity of providing a supervisor not to talk of a councilor. We agreed that it is fair that we zone the position to that village and we mobilized and even went to the former SSG and presented our case which he supported.”

The State chairman of the PDP Engr. Vita Abba has however assured that only popular candidates who emerged from the primaries or as consensus candidates would be fielded as candidates during the December council elections.

He noted that the party has prepared very well for the primaries and “its our hope that it will be a very good outing for our party because we are assuring all the aspirants of a level playing ground; we are assuring our party members especially the delegates that this exercise will be conducted in a very free and fair atmosphere.”

He warned electoral officers against any diversion of materials or collusion stating that the party will deal decisively with offenders; “we cannot condone indiscipline as a party that has been doing well in the state and we have no fears that the candidate that will emerge will also represent us well during the December elections.”