ANPP candidate predicts hitch-free election in Anambra

From SYLVANUS EZE, Awka
Posted: Thursday, April 7, 2011

The candidate of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) for Anambra Central Senatorial Zone, Mr. Chukwunweike Maduekwe, has predicted that the April 9 (Saturday). election in the state would be hitch-free and present people the opportunity to actually vote for candidates of their choice to power, even as he declared that he remains the candidate to beat in the election.
Maduekwe, who was fielding questions from journalists in Awka yesterday, said his prediction was hinged on the fact that certain issues that had hitherto hindered the conduct of credible elections in the country had been addressed.
"Now we can have real elections where the people themselves will determine who wins their mandate", he maintained, pointing out that before the amendment of the Electoral Act, money-politics and god-fatherism was the bane of elections in the country, especially Anambra state.
Maduekwe, who claimed that he had become the toast of everyone in the zone, even among members of the other major parties, however insisted that it did not matter whether or not he had the required political structure to win the election.
He said unlike what transpired in other parties, the primary elections that produced him and other ANPP candidates in Anambra State were the most violence-free.
"See what is happening in the other parties. People are leaving in droves because of the injustice perpetrated there. People from other parties have been calling to identify with me. You can see how we decided our primaries. Everybody is happy and I am happy too because justice has been done.
"In other parties they decide their candidates in the night. But my greatest joy is that Anambra Central Senatorial election will be hotly contested," he said, adding that "structure is an euphemism for fraud. It is people who have the people on their side that have political structure. What have they been doing with their so-called structure in the past 12 years in Anambra State?"
He stressed that he did not need to have money to throw about before he would win any election in Anambra State. "They have been throwing about stolen money. But they cannot buy the people," he added.
Maduekwe is contesting the Anambra Senatorial seat against Prof. Dora Akunyili of the All Progressives Grand Alliance and Mr. Uzoma Igbonwa of the Action Congress of Nigeria. The Peoples Democratic Party does not yet have a candidate.