By Jude Michael
As the race to the Government House of Anambra State hots up, the Candidate of Action Alliance, AA, in the November 8, Governorship Election in Anambra State, Ozo Jeff Nweke, has urged fellow candidates to play by the rules and be fair.
Nweke who stated this in a press conference in Awka over the last weekend, asked politicians to eschew violence and blackmail to score political points but to stick to issues.
‘Political campaigns should be a period when candidates of parties should use to sell their programmes to the electorate and convince them on the viability or otherwise of what they are bringing to the table.
‘The essence of political campaigns shouldn’t be to malign or engage in character assassination or unnecessary altercations with political opponents; but to showcase our developmental plans for the people.
Campaigns should be issue-based. What are your plans for the security of life and property? How do you intend to stop kidnappings and killings that have become common place in our state?’
‘How do you attract investors to come and build industries, employ our youth and improve our revenue base without necessarily taking people to the cleaners in the name of politics?
‘These are the issues that ought to dominate our discourse and not name callings,’ Nweke stated, noting that anything contrary to those amounted to politics of bitterness and undue recourse to the gallery, which, he said, was not what the people of the state needed at this moment in time.
The AA candidate equally condemned as despicable some recent attacks and use of uncouth language by some people who reacted to a trending video of Anambra State Governor, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, dancing with his son to a music waxed by the latter, saying such attacks were unnecessary.
He maintained that Soludo, as a family man with children, had every right to dance with his son.
‘Soludo is human and deserves to express himself like every other human on what he likes. It is therefore both condemnable and detestable for anyone to ridicule the first family of the state because of that. My idea is that we should all desist from this dirty politics of bitterness and calumny just to gain undue political advantage and focus on issues.
‘On our side, we have mapped out very robust programmes on how to rescue Anambra from misrule and put the state on the path of development and progress which we will keep unfolding as we meet people in our campaigns.
‘I believe there could be different approaches toward the way things are done but Governor Soludo is trying his best in terms of general development.
‘Though, he is not devoid of mistakes, as such default is naturally embedded in our everyday life. We hold him high and where such mistake is noticed, should be handled with correction in order to move the state further in the right direction,’ Nweke stressed.
