Christian Aburime, the Press Secretary to the Anambra State Governor, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, has said his principal stands by his comments on a former governor of the state and the Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi.

Soludo had dismissed the chances of the Labour Party flag bearer in the coming presidential poll and criticised the style of Ndigbo in its quest for the country’s number one seat in an article titled, ‘History beckons and I will not be silent.’

The article drew mixed reactions across the country and particularly on social media, where Soludo was heavily criticised.

Obi ruled Anambra between 2006 and 2014 on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance before he defected to the Peoples Democratic Party and later, Labour Party.

But speaking on the criticisms generated by the article, the aide of the former Central Bank Governor maintained that Soludo had the right to his opinion.

Aburime spok in Awka, on Thursday, while responding to questions from The PUNCH

He said, “The governor is not feeling any way threatened even as the article has triggered series of backlashes, threats and criticisms. What the people should realise is that the governor only expressed his opinion, which is guaranteed by the constitution of the country and that opinion should not warrant threats or abuses.

“The governor’s son, Ozonna, did not disown what the father said. The trending article purportedly claiming that the son disowned what his father said did not emanate from Soludo’s son; it is simply the handiwork of mischief makers in order to blackmail the governor.

“It is not true that ‘unknown gunmen’ are threatening the governor to resign or be impeached. That report is false. Anambra people are behind Soludo and they are happy with what he is doing in the state.

“Nigerians all over the world are free to visit Anambra to see what the governor is doing. There is now law and order; all those impunity that used to be there before are no longer there.

“Soludo has no regret whatsoever because all he said has been said before and he should not be insulted for expressing his opinion.”

IF ANY INEC STAFF IS SEEING THIS, PLEASE WE NEED THESE THINGS LISTED BELOW TO BE IMPLEMENTED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE IN FUTURE ELECTIONS..

1. Once the Election ends, and before the counting of votes commences, let the BVAS-device automatically transmit its generated accreditation-data to the Collation System, and also to the online Results Portal.

(Even if there are more than one BVAS-devices working inside one Polling-Unit, let all of them transmit all their information into the online results portal, and let all their automatically uploaded data reflect against their respective Polling-Units untampered-with, even before the tallying and counting of votes commence).

2. Please, INEC should try and be uploading collated results sheets to the online results portal too..

I am happy that INEC would soon be uploading wards-collated sheets..
But Please, they should try and expand the uploading of results too, to the LGAs Collated sheets, and States Collated Sheets...
Since INEC can upload the Polling-Unit results for all the 176,846 Polling-Units (Nationwide), and also upload the wards-collated sheets in all the 8,809 wards (Nationwide), then, uploading the LGAs-Collated sheets in just 774 LGAs and the States-Collated sheets in just 36 States, and the Final National Collation Sheet would not be a big problem too.. (These would just be an additional 811 uploads, which is so easy to do - for someone who had already uploaded 185,655 sheets)

3. Please, we would love INEC to also be including inside their Published Results, the total number of cancelled Polling-Units, and the total number of affected Registered Voters, (and/or the Affected Number of Collected PVCs) in the cancelled Polling-Units..
This Particular Number would help us (the independent observers) in carrying out adequate comparative analysis..