Athan Achonu, the Labour Party candidate in the November 11 governorship election in Imo, has faulted plans by Governor Hope Uzodimma’s government to conduct council polls a few months before the gubernatorial contest.

Mr Achonu made his stance known while addressing journalists in Owerri on Wednesday.

Mr Uzodimma had, in a meeting with leaders of the All Progressives Congress in Imo last April, promised to conduct local government elections no later than July. 

However, the election timetable has yet to be announced.

Mr Achonu, represented by the director-general of his campaign organisation, Chime Nzeribe, argued that governors should conduct council polls upon their assumption of office rather than months to a governorship election.

He decried the delay in the conduct of the council polls describing it as a “betrayal of the real motive” behind the election.

According to him, the timing of a local government election should reflect not a desperate desire to groom supporters at the grassroots level for the ruling party but a sincere desire to empower the local governments and make them work in the interest of the masses.

“We are at a loss why a government that has almost exhausted its constitutionally guaranteed four years in office has woken up on the eve of its exit to perform a very crucial task it bluntly ignored when it had all the time in the world to do so,” Mr Achonu explained. 

He added, “The choice of this seeming odd hour to conduct local government elections underscores the fact that it’s being motivated by re-election desperation, and not the collective welfare and well-being of the Imo electorate, especially the millions of rural dwellers.”

He promised the Imo electorate that “as your governor, I will conduct local council elections upon assumption of office and not weeks to the next election as seen today,” stressing that local government autonomy will solve “some of our problems ranging from insecurity to grassroots development and youth empowerment among others.”

He urged the Imo people to keep faith with his ‘Take Back Imo’ agenda as it will bring unprecedented prosperity to the state. 

(NAN)