By Anayo Okoli

UMUAHIA—CRISIS has erupted in the leadership of Abia State Chapter of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) with the State Working Committee (SWC)suspending the party’s state chairman, Rev. Austin Ehiemere, alleging misconduct and violation of party rules.

Secretary, Mr. Sunday Onukwubiri, who announced the suspension in Umuahia, alleged that Ehiemere was working against the directives of the national chairman of the party.

According to Onukwubiri, the national chairman of the party had directed that aspirants should pay all monies for nomination forms into the party’s account at Fidelity Bank, but Ehiemere allegedly directed otherwise that the monies should be paid into the party’s state account at FCMB.

According to the party, “the acts of misconduct include compilation of list of candidates for the local government election in Abia state outside the party secretariat without any SWC member sighting the list.”

Other infractions include: “Abuse of office by deliberate and fraudulent removal of the name of aspirants that passed through all the processes of purchasing the nomination forms, screening out those who won and replacing their names with those who never bought forms.

Onukwubiri said that with the action of the party chairman, that he has brought the party to disrepute. “Therefore, he will face the consequences o his action according to the constitution of our party”.

According to him, based on these allegations, “the party SWC therefore passed a vote of no confidence on the state chairman of the party and demanded that he steps down as the party chairman pending the hearing and determination of the allegations against him which includes gross violation of party guidelines and hijacking of the processes for the conduct of the primaries which specifically said that primaries should be conducted by local government party chairmen whose names are with INEC.”

Efforts to get the reaction of the chairman were not successful as calls to his mobile line were not picked. Also, a text message sent to him was not responded to at the time of filing this report.