The Enugu State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has reacted to the controversy that trailed the visit of the presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr Peter Obi, to the state last week.

DAILY POST reports that less than 24 hours before Obi’s visit for a town hall meeting, the NDC camp alleged that the state government had instructed the owners of the venue booked for the event to deny them access.

However, the event eventually held, with the venue owners categorically stating that the NDC had not booked the facility but had instead used a medical organisation as a front.

In a statement on Sunday, Steve Oruruo, Spokesperson and Director of Public Communications of the Enugu APC Campaign Council, accused the NDC of contriving layers of spurious allegations.

According to Oruruo, “Silence could have been golden, save for the brazen frivolity that characterised the chronicled and dramatised falsehood intentionally deployed to embarrass and impugn the image of the entire state, and invariably validate their next lie in the sequence of street-level mendacities, while an unsuspecting section of the populace may remain confused.”

He called on the people of the state to rise above what he described as barefaced antics, gimmicks and shenanigans from the pit of hell.

He said the explanation by the event centre owners had exposed the NDC's alleged lying machinery, stressing that “one Dr Sabastine Chuks Eze, a disguised client who paraded himself as the Registrar of the Nigeria Institute of Healthcare Givers and Medical Social Work Practitioners, in which he assented to the right of the aforesaid management to halt any activity, meeting, or event not conducted strictly in accordance with the stipulated rules of engagement, eventually metamorphosed into an NDC contract to host a town hall meeting at the behest of former Governor Peter Obi.”

Oruruo stated that, in a fruitless bid to deceive what he described as a highly elitist and intellectually persuaded Enugu electorate, Mrs Ada Ogbu and her dramatis personae threw caution to the wind in what perhaps turned out to be an attempt to muddy the waters through unforced errors.

“Where is the ecclesiastical rectitude, untainted probity, and self-acclaimed morality that former Governor Peter Obi preaches? Have they not been cascaded to Enugu NDC members?” Oruruo queried.

He further stated that “Enugu NDC has failed on arrival. It is almost non-existent in Enugu and perhaps gains its only infinitesimal traction whenever the state government or the name of our erudite Governor is mentioned in its tales of woes.

“Mischievously linking uncharitable words or deeds, without verifiable facts, to a revered state that the NDC purportedly intends to govern is antithetical to the minimum acceptable trust values and the widely acknowledged enviable security profile of Enugu State.”

While urging Mrs Ada Ogbu to apologise to the people of Enugu State, the APC said she would realise the extent to which she had offended the sensibilities and temperament of residents.

Oruruo said the 2027 elections should be about issues, ideas and the definitive capacity to deliver, stressing that the state remained peaceful and accommodating.

Peter Obi’s visit: Enugu NDC dead on arrival, thriving on alarmism – APC