Led by the state Commissioner for Youth Affairs, Karibe Ojigwe, the peace moves were met with few attendants and complaints.
Local government councillors were said to have shunned the peace meeting as they went to commiserate with the family of their colleague, the Majority Leader and Councillor representing Ezeukwu/Ugwueke ward, Emeka Agbara who died after a brief illness.
Addressing the nine-man committee led by Karibe Ojigwe, the council chairman, Emma Onwuchekwa said the meeting, first of its kind was “to avert what happened in 2019” where the All Progressives Congress defeated the PDP in the LGA, “and made APC to have root in Bende LGA”.
Onwuchekwa said after the primaries, the state Governor, Okezie Ikpeazu mandated commissioners to have such meetings “to identify issues and resolve them” and to see how to unify Bende, considering what happened at the primaries, hence the nine-man reconciliation committee and appealed to all aggrieved to sheath their sword.
“The problems were created by us and the rest was by the National,” he said, while the LGA party chairman, Deacon Chukwu pleaded with the aggrieved to drop their anger.
The chairman of the nine-man reconciliation committee, Ojigwe pleaded that “what went wrong can be corrected” as “Bende is PDP and PDP is Bende” and called on the aggrieved to drop their anger for the party to move forward.
According to him, the reconciliation is beyond the primaries “as the issues arising from the primaries were not caused by Gov. Okezie Ikpeazu or the state, but a national calamity”.
Though none of the aggrieved was seen at the meeting, two 2023 candidates who attended the meeting, Hon. Emmanuel Ndubuisi (Ijiriji Bende) and Nnamdi Ibekwe (Ozichi Foundation), noted the importance of the meeting for Bende LGA PDP to win, come the 2023 elections.
They said that for the party to have lost in 2019 was now a major problem for PDP in the area, stating that many faithful denied of the delegate status were angry and exhibited bottled-up anger courtesy of the electoral reforms by the National Assembly.
“It is the fault of the National Assembly, not the party,” they said pointing out that the inability of the state government to talk with the aggrieved at the International Conference Centre as scheduled compounded the problems of the aggrieved, adding “there should be the need to gather them and placate them”.
Others include Emma Ukwu Rocks, Haggler Okorie, Orji Udeagha who urged the aggrieved to vent their anger on the APC and the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.).
