Any lawmaker in Anambra State who is not a member of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) will only be an onlooker with just the statutory salary to play with, Chukwuma Soludo, the governor of the state, has warned communities.
The governor, told the communities, in a viral video ahead of state elections for members of the House of Assembly, which is the only polls holding in the state, initially slated for Saturday, but now postponed to March 18 that they should not expect any patronage or development from his government unless they voted for the ruling party.
His threat is coming against the backdrop of an expected backlash from voters in the state, who have threatened to use the election as a payback for his alleged treachery against Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), whom he reportedly worked against during the February 25 presidential election.
Soludo, who initially appeared to have supported Obi, by making state facilities available to him, including allowing him to flag off his campaign from the Anambra Government House, Awka, surprisingly made a volte-face by openly stating that Obi was wasting his time in contesting the election.
Apart from granting interviews in the media, where tried to pour cold water on the Obi project, he actually came out openly in November 2022 with his infamous letter, castigating the LP candidate, who was in fact the last but one predecessor in office.
In a video making the rounds on the social media, Soludo was seen telling members of Igbo-Uwku/Aguata 2 State constituency of the consequences of voting any other candidate outside APGA to work with him as a lawmaker, stating that the implication would be that such communities should expect nothing from him.
Maintaining that non-APGA lawmakers would only be entitled to only their salaries as only his friend who belonged to the party would have access to him, he said: ”Any person who I will work with must be an APGA. If you vote for another person and he wins and comes up to Awka, be assured he will be only collecting salaries. If he collects his salary, he will go home.
”Nobody in the House of Assembly builds roads; he does not build hospitals or schools because he does not have the money. I, the governor, am the only one that can do all those things. And it is only the person who is my friend and belongs to the same political party that will have access to me. It is only such a person that can advise me on those works that are to be done.
”Yes, that is how it should be. It is only my own that I will answer whenever he calls and listens. If you bring another person from another party, we shall be paying him salaries only. And he should be warned never to come near me asking me to do anything for his people. He should dare not.”