The Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige, has said that APC National Vice Chairman (Southeast), Chief Emma Eneukwu, is the leader of the party in the zone.
Ngige stated this while reacting to reports that the Minister of Science and Technology, Ogbonnaya Onu, had been endorsed leader of the party in the zone.
The Herald recalls that the adoption was done on January 2 during a meeting at the minister’s country home in Uburu, Ebonyi State.
Eneukwu moved the motion for the adoption of Onu in a meeting attended by former governor of Enugu State, Sullivan Chime; Senator Ayogu Eze; Chief George Moghalu; Amb. Fidel Ayogu; Chief Mark Wabara, among others.
But in an interview with select journalists recently, Ngige noted that the party constitution did not make any provision for the position.
He stressed that if they were a need for a party leader in the zone, then the National Vice Chairman (Southeast) could be regarded as such.
Ngige is a former Governor of Anambra State while Onu is a former Governor of Abia State.
Asked who the party leader in the zone is, the labour minister said, “Our party constitution doesn’t make any provision for leadership in the zone. A leader emerges. It is the people who will say who their leader is. We’ve not sat as a group now to say this is the leader of APC.
“What we’re doing when Okorocha was governor was what we call collegiate leadership. We had Okorocha as the only governor. We had Ogbonnaya Onu who was former governor and former chairman. You had me, who was the ACN leader and former senator elected on APC platform in the whole of former Eastern Region. So I became the leader automatically. I was also a former governor. So we had a collegiate type of leadership as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t make any meaning for me that they say I’m the leader.
“The leadership evolves and naturally that is what it is. The meeting at Ogbonnaya’s Onu’s house where he was announced leader was not a statutory meeting. It’s only statutory members of the zone that can decide that they want to elect a leader. That issue has come up before when Okorocha, as governor of Imo state two years ago, brought a former senator and my friend Ken Nnamani and said he was the leader of APC in Southeast; of course we told him no.
“I brought out the party constitution and told him we don’t have to elect anybody that is not in our agenda and the meeting supported me. So we jettisoned it. Even Nnamani said he was a new entrant into the party, only one week old and he had read the constitution that there’s no place in the constitution a leader is mentioned.
“So it’s you people that want to over-flog the issue and create chasm between leaders of the party in the zone. I don’t think it’s anything we need to break our heads over.
“If you want to summon a meeting, the zonal chairman must be informed. He’s the highest person in the party structure. If you want to look at it strictly from the constitution, the zonal chairman, (Emma Eneukwu), is the leader in the zone.”
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