By PAMELA EBOH, Awka

The Coalition of Civil Society Organizations in Anambra State over the weekend insisted that the All Progressives Congress (APC) has no governorship candidate in the November 6 gubernatorial election in Anambra State.

It described the candidature of Senator Andy Uba’s of as a ruse.

A statement signed by the Public Affairs and Social Mobilization Director of the organization, Dr Vincent Obiatuegwu, partly reads: “Everyone knows that the APC has no candidate in this election.

“There was no primary election in the state which Senator Uba or any of the 14 governorship aspirants could have won. The judiciary would certainly rule even after November 6 that the APC did not validly field a candidate in the election.

“Chief George Moghalu, a founding APC member and chief executive of the National Inland Waterways Authority who sought the gubernatorial ticket, has challenged Uba’s nomination in court.

“Even top shots in the Presidency as well as members of the National Assembly and other senior party operatives have long come to terms with the fact that the APC has no candidate in the election, the statement added.

“A handful of elements sat together at Golden Tulip Hotel at Agulu on June 26 and cooked up fantastic figures in the name of vote allocations to the 14 APC gubernatorial aspirants.

“Uba received an unbelievable 320,201 out of a supposed 348,490 votes in a state where the APC got the least number of votes in the country in the 2019 general election because APC’s numerical strength in the state is not more than 30,000.”

He said that Moghalu has the support of key persons in the Presidency who believe he is fighting for justice, comparing his action to that of President Muhammadu Buhari who went to the Supreme Court three times in search of justice after presidential elections.

While noting that none of the other 13 contestants have endorsed Uba, Obiatuegwu said that the coalition has adopted the candidate of tge All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, Professor Charles Soludo as the candidate of choice for the November poll.

“The Presidency have privately endorsed the reform-minded former Central Bank of Nigeria governor who consolidated the Nigerian banking system between 2005 and 2010, earning him the world’s Central Bank of the Year award for two consecutive years.

“An internationally recognized economics professor, Soludo is a member of the President Buhari Committee of Economic Advisers and the only African chosen to work, in the wake of the 2008 economic meltdown, on the United Nations Panel of Experts to reform the global economic and financial system under the leadership of Joseph Stieglitz, the American Nobel Prize winner in Economics in 2001,” Obiatuegwu added.