Election: South-East groups pledge bulk vote for Atiku

No fewer than 180 interest groups from the South-East have promised bulk vote for Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the Feb. 16 presidential election.

Mr Ugochukwu Agballa, the President-General, Igbo Improvement Union, disclosed this on Wednesday in Enugu during a town hall meeting with Mr Peter Obi, Atiku’s running mate.

Agballa said that the mobilisation of the bulk vote for the Atiku/Obi ticket was borne out of the need to enthrone good governance in the country.

“Obi is the running mate of the PDP presidential candidate and comes from the South-East of Nigeria.

“We are partnering with other groups including, community leaders to realise this project. We want our people to adopt it as their project, so that nobody looks for who will give them money to vote.

“Our members are campaigning across the region with a view to increasing the number of votes that will be garnered from here.”

He said that the town hall meeting was aimed at fine-tuning strategies on the mobilisation of support for the PDP candidates.

Agballa noted that the outcome of the election would determine the future of the region, which he said, had cried for marginalisation for too long.

In an opening remarks, the Chairman of the occasion, Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, said that the adoption of the PDP candidates would be in the best interest of Ndigbo.

Iwuanyanwu, however, said it was sad that some young ones from the region were working against such interest, by telling people not to vote.

He urged community leaders in various localities within the South-East to call such people to order, as what they were preaching was not in their interest.

Meanwhile, the Chairman, Enugu State Traditional Rulers Council, Igwe Lawrence Agubuzo, said that monarchs across the region were praying for a peaceful election.

Agubuzo said that people of the area had no choice than to support their brother and son.

In a goodwill message, a former governor of Old Anambra State, Chief Jim Nwobodo, described Feb. 16 as a defining moment for the South-East.

Nwobodo appealed to opinion leaders from the region to mobilise massive support for the PDP candidates.

“Atiku is our in-law, our brother and our friend and we must not disappoint him. No vote in my area will go to another party apart from the PDP,” he said.