Nnewi – Contrary to his mother’s political inclination, Chief Ben Etiaba, son of former Anambra State Governor and first Female Governor in Nigeria, Dame Virgie Etiaba, is gearing to contest the Anambra 2021 Governorship election on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Ben Etiaba on Monday took a major step towards the contest with the revalidation of his membership of the APC, at Obi Ezeonu Polling Centre in Nnewi in his Umudim Ward 1 Nnewi home, during the ongoing APC Membership Registration and Revalidation Centre.
Dame Virgie who became governor of Anambra State on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), when her principal, former Governor Peter Obi was impeached in 2006, has not announced her defection from the APGA.
Etiaba’s position is made more trivial because Nnewi is an APGA stronghold due to the fact that the Founder of the party and late Biafran warlord, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, is from Nnewi.
TNC correspondent in Anambra State gathered that the Party granted Chief Etiaba the honor and privilege of being the first to be registered at the Centre and by so doing, revalidated his membership of APC, which he said he had previously joined two years ago.
Speaking after the revalidation exercise, Chief Etiaba, who is expected to pick up his expression of interest and nomination forms before the June 2021 Primaries of the Party, said his candidacy offers Anambra a new vision and purpose.
“The leadership of the All Progressives Congress in the South East has over the last few months demonstrated by their action, every seriousness to win the November 6, 2021 governorship election for the first time in Anambra State.
’The Party has delivered impressive infrastructural developments in Anambra State recently, including many Constituency projects in all three Senatorial Zones of the State.
“Others include the Onitsha to Enugu expressway and the Second Niger Bridge which had been on the drawing board for decades,” he boasted.
Etiaba revealed that President Muhammad’s Buhari, who recently appointed a number of Anambra State indigenes into many federal boards, had in January 2019 commissioned the Zik Mausoleum in Onitsha, Anambra State in honor of Nigeria’s first President, the late great Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, an accomplishment he said, successive Federal administrations had failed to make.
