Imo guber primaries: I did not declare fake results, says Gulak

* Okorocha calls for Gulak’s arrest

The Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship electoral committee for Imo State, Alhaji Ahmed Gulak, has said that what he submitted to the National Working Committee as a fall-out of his assignment in Imo state to supervise the party governorship primary election was a reflection of what actually happened.

He said that it is left for the National Working Committee (NWC) of the party to do whatever they wanted with the results. The chairman had declared Senator Hope Uzodinma as the winner of the APC gubernatorial election in Imo state.

Gulak spoke on Channels TV programme on Wednesday just as Governor Rochas Okorocha called for his arrest and prosecution over what he described as the biggest electoral fraud of the century.

The chairman said that he was surprised that when he arrived in Owerri the brief he got was different from what the national leadership of the party had asked him to do, adding that as statesman he could not afford to sell his conscience.

He alleged that some members of the committee were abducted and taken to Government House from their hotel, adding that he had to escape when he sensed danger.

“I did not appoint myself. I was appointed by the NWC to supervise the governorship primary election in Imo and I conducted and collated the results. I did not go there with an agenda. My only agenda was for the party to be given back to the people by conducting a transparent and free primary. I refused to accept an agenda that was put to me. I will not be cajoled into doing what is not right. I have a name to protect.

“The results I submitted were not fake and cannot be fake. The announcement could not be announced in Owerri because the governor was looking for me. The party did not toe the line of the governor or to satisfy his wishes. Some of my members disappeared and were taken to Government House. I did not want to say these things, but the time will come when the truth will be told. It is left for the party to do what they want with the results I submitted,” he added.

Meanwhile Governor Rochas Okorocha has called for the arrest and arraignment of Gulak.

Okorocha, in a statement signed by his Chief Press Secretary, Sam Onwuemeodo, said what Gulak came to do in Imo did not only constitute serious threat to the country’s promising democracy but also danger to  nation.

He said, “Giving men like him national assignment like the one he was sent to Imo State to do was just licensing him to blackmail the nation and put our democracy to ridicule. And there are certain lies or actions a man who had been the Political Adviser to a former President of the nation should have overgrown, no matter the temptation.

“The childish tale of his attempted kidnap was just an after-thought. He knew he didn’t act well his part and was only trying to see how he could come out from the tight corner he had boxed himself into.”

Giving an account of what happened, the statement said, “The man called Alhaji Ahmed Gulak flew into Owerri by 12:45pm on Monday, October 1, 2018, being the day slated for the guber primary. And let him publish his flight documents to prove us right or wrong. They went straight to the Police Headquarters where they deposited all the materials for the governorship primary.

“After that, the committee members entered into a lengthy meeting with the Candidates, Stakeholders, and heads of Security Agencies in the State. The meeting lingered till 6:30pm. At the end of the meeting, he announced that the primary would now hold on Tuesday, October 2, 2018. And reporters who were at the Police Headquarters waiting for the outcome of the meeting went and reported that the Imo primary would now hold on Tuesday, October 2, 2018. At the end, they went to their hotel to clean up and eat.

“With all these activities, the courtesy call he was to pay on the governor with members of his committee could not take place till. 8:45pm that Monday. The courtesy call lasted for about an hour. All said and done, they left the Government House for their hotel at about 9:55pm.

“They lodged at Rockview Hotel Owerri that shares fence with the Police Headquarters and the other end of the hotel, the Owerri Prison, with Soldiers on guard. The hotel is also close to the Government House Owerri with a team of Mobile Policemen at checkpoint there, twenty-four hours.

“So, the question patriotic Nigerians should ask Alhaji Gulak is that, if you left Government House by 9:55pm and you claimed you fled Owerri by 4am, and considering the location of Rockview Hotel where they lodged, then, when and where did the kidnap attempt take place?

“And why should he be kidnapped when the materials for the primary were kept at Police Headquarters. And of what value would have his kidnap served anybody since he didn’t have any material and the primary hadn’t been conducted.”

Okorocha said that Gulak was on a hatchet job in Imo, stressing, “He was one of those who in 2015 labelled Okorocha Alhaji in Government House, Okoro-Hausa and that he was planning with President Muhammadu Buhari to Islamize Igboland, all because of APC. And few years after, he has come to cause trouble in the party and to reap where he didn’t sow. We do not think it is the right thing. No landlord vacates his house for an unfaithful and unreliable tenant.”