Alleged Fraud: Did Osita Okechukwu Get Into Trouble For Criticising APC Leadership?

Osita Okechukwu, Director-General of the Voice of Nigeria (VON), is still being held in custody more than 24 hours after he was detained by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for alleged fraud.

Okechukwu arrived at the headquarters of the anti-graft agency on Saturday afternoon to respond to questions on N1.3 billion fraud allegedly perpetrated through his office.

The grilling of the outspoken politician and foundation member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) came few months after he criticised the Governor Mai Mala Buni-led caretaker leadership of the party.

The VON DG, in an interview with The Sun, had blamed APC’s loss in the November 6, 2021 Anambra governorship election on alleged “imposition (of candidate) and impunity” by the party’s national leadership.

Asked why the APC lost the election, Okechukwu had said: “…the lesson is simple; that imposition and impunity cost us an election we could have won, no matter how slim.

“The folly is that when our candidate won the party primary election with over 230,000 votes, my friend called me and was happy and was jubilating. And I asked what’s up, and he said that with a vote-bank of over 200,000, there was nothing stopping the APC from victory. That was the hope raised to the highest then.

“Indeed, this was an election we plotted to be our springboard to having a Nigerian president of Igbo extraction in the 2023 presidential election. We had gathered momentum, which carelessly had been flushed away. To be honest, one has been reluctant to grant an interview on our great party’s disastrous outing in the Anambra State governorship election. Who will ever dream that we cannot win a local government area? It was an unenforced error, for the APC’s Constitution in Article 20, clearly warned us that imposition breeds discontent and crisis.”

It would be recalled that the Anambra APC governorship primary had witnessed a series of controversies, with some party members alleging that the primary did not hold.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had said that its officials deployed to monitor the party’s governorship primary did not witness voting at the collation centres.

“Contrary to the provisions of Section 18 of the guidelines for the conduct of direct primaries issued by All Progressives Congress (APC), accreditation of party members did not take place in any of the voting centres in Anambra State up to the time INEC monitors were recalled by 5:30pm.

“The commission’s monitors did not witness accreditation, voting, counting of votes, collation or declaration of result at the voting centres and collation centres up till 5:30pm when the monitors were recalled,” INEC had said.