Leaders from Okigwe senatorial zone of Imo State have been meeting since the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared the All Progressive Congress (APC) winner in the recently held senatorial bye-election which had Frank Ibezim as candidate.
The leaders, according to sources close to the meetings, are insisting that Ibezim remains their choice of candidate as against Ifeanyi Araraume who also tried to lay claim to the bye-election as a candidate even when the court stopped him.
Araraume had gone to court to stop Ibezim but the Appeal Court returned Ibezim as the APC properly nominated candidate for the election prior to the election on December 5, 2020 which APC eventually won.
Though Araraume instituted another case of alleged certificate irregularity against Ibezim, the Okigwe leaders are upbeat that the case will be appealed soon and the certificate of return given to him as their senator-elect.
Araraume, it was learnt, has been in Abuja since the INEC declared the APC winner without naming the candidate that won in the contest, allegedly approaching different courts to obtain order to stop the INEC from issuing certificate of return to Ibezim, but our sources revealed that the courts he had approached told him to first go and vacate the order of the Court of Appeal that substituted his name with that of Ibezim as the candidate for the senatorial bye-election for Okigwe.