Traditional leaders and the entire community of Alor town, in Idemili South Local Government Area, Anambra State, yesterday, declared their support for the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige.
The declaration was contained in a statement in Awka by the Alor Peoples Assembly (APA), the legitimate town union government of the town.
APA was reacting to an open letter to President Muhammadu Buhari by some individuals, who claimed to be the caretaker committee of Alor town, alleging that they were being intimidated by Ngige.
In the statement signed by Traditional Prime Minister/Regent, Nathan Ezekwesili, President General, Uzoma Igbonwa and three other community leaders, the people disowned the letter, authored by one Christian Okudo as Alor caretaker chairman and co-signed by Chukwuemeka Udeze, as Onowu of Alor.
The town union said the authors of the letter were operating under the former Alor Peoples Convention, which had ceased to exist due to long years of imposed caretaker government.
According to the community, the people writing the petition were the same persons who staged a week long film show at Alor market square during the 2015 general election, where President Buhari and Ngige were portrayed as Boko Haram members.
The community dismissed the allegation by the petitioners that Ngige was intimidating Alor people, saying the minister stands for the rule of law, for justice and for equity.
The statement added that Ngige has no reason to allow himself or his followers to lend themselves to community destabilisation or give chance to the enemies of Ndi-Alor to prevail.
“The issue at hand clearly interrogates the decision of the state government that over the years gave support to this illegality. It is time it reconsidered these decisions. We warn that these miscreants are not our leaders and cannot in any way represent us.”
On the claim by the petitioners that Alor town is littered with abandoned projects, APA wondered what would have become of Alor without Ngige.
It said Ngige, as a civil servant, initiated and galvanised efforts for the phase one of the Alor Rural Electrification in 1987 when his friend, Bunu Sherif Musa was the minister of Power, Mines and Steel, and further took it to phase two under the administration of Herbert Obi-Eze as the military administrator of the old Anambra State.
The town union equally recalled that Ngige’s diligent service at the Ministry of Health caught the attention of his then minister, Olikoye Ransom Kuti, that he (Kuti) paid a working visit to Alor on Easter Monday, April 1987, and upgraded the then Alor Rural Health Centre to a comprehensive Health Centre with lots of medical equipment, a momentum Ngige himself sustained as Anambra State governor.
Credit: The Sun