By Anayo Okoli

UMUAHIA — THE National Vice Chairman, South East zone, of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Col. Austin Akobundu (rtd), has said the party was better organised now to win all contestable seats in 2015 elections.

Apparently reacting to claims of National Chairman of All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, Chief Victor Umeh, that his party would win Abia and other South East states next year as the zone had never been a PDP area, Akobundu dismissed such claims as laughable.

He also dismissed Umeh’s claim that APGA was an Igbo party and wondered how a purported Igbo party should only be controlling only one of the five states in the South East.
Chief Umeh’s statement when he was at Umuahia to commission APGA’s state office seemed to have rattled the ruling party as he had since been receiving verbal bashing from PDP.

He said:  “APGA only exists in the shadow; it does not have the political spine required by any serious political party, even in Anambra State, where it controls the government.
“The PDP under my watch, has closed all ranks and has corrected the mistakes of the past.

“We have gone ahead to reconcile all our aggrieved members in the zone, a feat that has positioned us as indivisible component ready to win all the elections. Those issues that put us asunder have been laid to rest.

“Umeh’s claim that Ndigbo follow APGA more than they follow other parties is ridiculous because it is only in PDP’s administration that Ndigbo, for the first time, are able to shirk off the toga of defeat in the civil war and subsequent marginalisation as one of their own, for the first time, was appointed the Chief of Army Staff.
“Also, it is only under PDP that the 2nd Niger Bridge and many other laudable projects which have lingered on since 1970s, were commenced. And this is under Goodluck Jonathan’s administration.”