A House of Representatives aspirant of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Dr. Oliver Ezeude, has called on new entrants into the party to avoid causing disunity in the party by standing down on the rules guiding the party.

Ezeude, who spoke in an interview with journalists in Awka, the Anambra State capital, said that there is obsession by few individuals to destroy everything that the party has been built over the years.

According to him, efforts by those few individuals to jettison the zoning arrangement in Aguata Federal Constituency of the state are tearing the party apart in the state.

His words: “We are in election period and many people have crossed over to APC. While we welcome them with open hands because of our belief that we need more people in the party, such people should follow the guidelines in the party.

“I, therefore, urge the party leadership to look into the problem in Aguata objectively because it is not good for APC to throw away all the gains we made here.”

Aguata is the constituency of the Uba brothers – Senator Andy Uba and Chief Chris Uba – who are currently vying for the senatorial seat under the umbrella of APC and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) respectively for Anambra South Senatorial Zone.

The aspirant observed that the problem in APC in Aguata zone might lead to loss of the gains it had made since 2015 and urged the national and state leadership of the party to intervene immediately before things spiral out of control.

Ezeude added that since the present democratic dispensation, there is an unwritten zoning understanding between Aguata North and Aguata South state constituencies for the positions of House of Representatives and local government chairman for the area.

He said: “To date, Aguata South had produced House of Representatives members for 16 years, while Aguata North had produced for only four years.

“In the spirit of the zoning arrangement, all the stakeholders, including traditional rulers, presidents general of the various communities and the clergy, are unanimous in their position that the next member of the House of Representatives should come from Aguata North.

“The All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) has done the right thing by picking its candidate from Aguata North, but in APC, we have a different scenario in which the party does not want to obey the zoning arrangement.

“In Aguata, we know ourselves in APC and we have been working together to build the party until this election period when some people joined and started causing trouble. Somebody like me suffered serious physical attacks during the 2015 election because of my open support for President Muhammad Buhari.”

While saying that the national chairman of APC has good intentions, he noted that the problem at the national secretariat of the party were fueled by many hangers-on who were causing confusion by feeding the party with wrong information about happenings in the party at the grass root level.

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