Hon Emmanuel Jime's Campaign Support Group Writes APC NationalHeadquarters.Click And Read.

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Mr Chairman,

National Leaders of the APC,



Sirs,

It is out of deep consideration that we write you this letter. We are a group of young men and women from Benue State and with a membership of about 5,000 persons all of voting age (verifiable from our facebook group "Ready4Jime").

We are united by a shared inspiration borne out of a following of the legislative performance of Rt. Hon. Emmanuel Jime and his aspiration to Govern our State - Benue State.

His aspiration excited us for a number of reasons namely:

- He was the Speaker of the Benue State House of Assembly at the time the bill establishing the Benue State University was passed into law, effectively becoming the first State owned University from Northern Nigeria.

- Since 2007 when he was first elected into the House of Representatives, he instituted a Scholarship Scheme for all Constituents of Makurdi/Guma at the law school paying each beneficiary an annual scholarship of a hundred thousand naira (=N= 100, 000.00).

- Since 2007, he instituted a Scholarship Scheme for his constituents (500 of them each year are paid 20T each) in the various Universities as well as 420 awardees from the other 21 Local Governments of our State with each beneficiary earning Ten thousand naira (=N= 10, 000.00).

The Benue State Government Scholarship to Students in Universities is a paltry five thousand naira annually and it has not been paid for several years now. You can therefore, understand why our enthusiasm towards Emmanuel Jime is very strong.

- It was Emmanuel Jime who excited an entire nation in 2007 by moving the motion nominating the Speaker of the HOR Rt. Hon Aminu Waziri Tambuwal. A man whose conduct of that House and eventual defection to the APC, remains a thing of pride to all progressives.

- It is on record that Rt Hon Emmanuel Jime has sponsored the highest number of bills and motions at the National Assembly as far as Benue Legislators are concerned. Some of these bills and motions include barring Presidents from granting presidential pardons to corrupt and convicted criminals whose offences are of a financial/economic nature. Nothing will excite our Presidential candidate more than to sign this kind of legislation into law.

He sponsored bills against endless casualisation of workers; bills to ensure that compensation is paid victims of floods - victims who must first abide by building ordinances for flood prone zones as well as been on a flood insurance; and several other bills.

When disasters fell us, namely : the flood, attacks on Benue Communities by alleged Fulani herdsmen; fire incident leaving only charred remains of an entire block of a female hostel in our State University - BSU; Rt Hon Emma Jime came to our rescue.

What's more, his constituency projects are favourably biased towards education, electricity, water, Agriculture and women co-operatives. He is by far, the most obvious and effective member of the House of Reps from our State. An assertion we urge everyone to assess based on the universally acceptable parameters for assessing lawmakers.

As young people, these things inspire us more than the selfish cravings of a god father especially the cravings of one whose drive and industry in the Senate is far beneath the sort of vibrancy expected of a minority leader in any part of the world.

In the course of his (Rt Hon Emmanuel Jime) campaign for Governor, we joined in the rallies and hoped for the day of his emergence as candidate so we would mobilise for his election and that of his Party the APC believing that his antecedents are assuring of a better tomorrow.

We believed as professed by the National Leadership of the APC and as exemplified by the conduct of the party's presidential primaries that the Gubernatorial Primaries in Benue State would fit the credentials of a Party seeking belief and trust in her message for change. Alas, we were horrendously mistakened.

The Benue APC ridiculed the entire APC. The party failed to conduct a Party primary and worse still, she shopped for the candidature of the immediate past minister of State for Trade and Investment Dr Samuel Ortom who contested the PDP Primaries on the 8th of December 2014 and placed a distant 3rd!

His emergence was based on a clannish sentiment so unpopular it couldn't be relied on to sway delegates and so, Dr. George Akume decided to hand pick Dr Samuel Ortom and refer to him as a "consensus candidate"! It stood every provision in the APC constitution on its head. It should embarrass the National Leadership of the Party that has made various sacrifices just so the right thing is done so they are not termed hypocrites and pretenders to change.

Still, buoyed by the exuberance of youth, we held unto hope; we bragged that the National Leadership of the Party would not legitimise what Akume and co had done. Unfortunately, in retrospect, our belief was obviously vested in vanity and our trust in the leadership of the party to insist on the right thing was dashed. In Benue, it reminded us that things might not change after all. If the party canvassing change can not conduct a straight forward party primary reflecting fairness, transparency and all of the usual core democratic paraphernalia, there is indeed very little to inspire the hope for real change nor do we have a real basis for a strong moral expectation on INEC to conduct a proper general election for us in Benue State given that the latter is more tasking and complex than a party primary for which the failure of the Benue APC is well pronounced.

As we write, the man whose antecedents excited us and whose aspiration inspired us, is still in court. We sympathise with him even as the Party is determined to insist on the lie that the right thing was done. Regardless, we still hope that, for our sake and for the party's sake, he will succeed. For daring to fight at all, he is our true hero and our respect for him is unmatched. We also heed his call for the full mobilisation of support and voters for the election of our Presidential candidate (Gen. Muhammadu Buhari) "whose primary election shines as a beacon of hope for internal democracy".

Finally, in our thousands, we write to you not as party men for many of us do not belong to a party. We write you as young people united by a craving for change and vigilant enough to not allow any sort of primary election malfeasance to position those who will not offer us change, benefit from our struggle for change and effectively make such change unattainable for the rest of us. We write to alert your party's conscience to the hypocrisy of the Benue situation and register our disappointment thus far as well as warn that the spirit to fight against rigging might have wanned in APC Benue State. To train party supporters towards accepting an electoral fraud in a primary election only ends up weakening the desired spirited efforts against electoral frauds perpetuated against them in an eventual general election.

As non-partisan supporters, our discretion is not informed by party as much as by candidates in an election, how prepared they are and the manner of their emergence. We make this point known because we seek from each party, a basic regards for the laws, for due process and for generally high democratic tendencies. We rate the Benue APC very low using these criteria. We are not folks who would vote candidates that emerge from shoddy arrangements. The APC should not allow some of her chapters act different from what the party seeks to exemplify. Where such egregious anomaly exists, it should be corrected to fit party and not chapter standards.

Long Live those who seek change not just of political parties but of political thinking and Governance.

God Bless Us All.

#Ready4Jime





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