Grapevine

Money politics has killed Nigeria –Accord national chair

After the 2023 election, I noticed that there was a lot of homework we needed to do in the party so that we could be better prepared for the election, and also stand out as one of the strong political parties in Nigeria. Usually, you notice that most candidates of political parties like Accord, after running for elective positions, will jettison and go to the so-called bigger parties. But I stayed put because I still have so much to contribute to the party to give it a better political and national outlook.

You know that we had a chairmanship that had spanned for about 16 years, and there was a need for us to rejig the party. So, we set up a caretaker committee to launch the party into convention. There were issues with the convention because the other people went to an unknown location to hold their convention and declared themselves the winner. We were surprised. They even sent us a video where we saw only 17 people at their convention.

It was later we heard that they submitted a report to INEC which was signed by some INEC staff that over 500 voted for them. I am surprised. That was what shocked us and made us go to court. We went to court, and we got an order that INEC should recognise my person as the chairman. We went to court and the court ordered INEC to recognise a person as the chairman.

We paid duly for the convention. So, it is in a bid to restructure the party and stop all these shenanigans and abnormalities in our political party that we are here because we had serious issues when we ran for the last election. We had party leaders who were not patriotic and did not want the party to win. They were only after how they would siphon from the candidates and make money for themselves.

Since the court ordered INEC to recognise you as the national chairman of the party, have you received any notice of recognition from the electoral commission?