The Labour Party candidate dismissed the notion that he’s in the Imo governorship race as a forerunner for Governor Uzodimma.
Athan Achonu, the Labour Party candidate in the Imo governorship election, has declared that his opponent and incumbent, Hope Uzodimma, can’t persuade him to drop his ambition.
While speaking in an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Friday, October 20, 2023, Achonu maintained that he remains the candidate to beat in the November 11 contest.
his is coming following speculations in some quarters that the Labour Party candidate is a forerunner for Uzodimma and would soon be bought off.
Commenting on this, Achonu shrugged off the notion, insisting that the incumbent won’t be able to buy him over, not even with $100m.
“The people of Imo State already know the truth. They are following me. How can I be a placeholder for Hope Uzodimma? Give me $1 million? That’s not possible,”
“I have been around in this country. I am very well known. I can say that for myself. So, I have a reputation in this country. I am a man of integrity. Hope Uzodimma can’t buy me even with $100 million. It is not possible. Nobody can buy me. Money can’t buy me,” the Labour Party candidate said.
Achonu revealed that he was not initially motivated to join the Imo governorship race but was forced to cave into the demands of his supporters who didn’t want him to retire yet from politics in order to change things for the better in the state.
“So, they said if I abandon them, they would not have any place to go. That’s why I really went into that race. I didn’t want to run for governor,” Senator Achonu added.
The former lawmaker lamented the bottlenecks of doing business in the southeast while saying that the quest to rewrite history pushed him into the governorship contest.
“Igbos have been chased out of Igbo land. It is like an occupied territory. So, every half a kilometre, you see a Police checkpoint, you see a Customs checkpoint. So, people cannot trade freely,” he added.
“So, I now started something called Akwu Ruo Ulo [Let the wealth reach home] asking Igbos to come home and invest in spite of all the obstacles placed on their path that eventually good leadership will emerge and we would dismantle those obstacles. So, that’s why I now came,” the LP candidate added.
