Daniel Onjeh asked the APC national leadership to take urgent action against the state chairman and others for anti-party activities.
By John M Tondo
The All Progress Congress (APC) candidate for Benue South Senatorial District in the 2023 General Elections, Daniel Onjeh, has petitioned the party’s national headquarters accusing its state chairman, Austin Agada, of anti-party activities.
In the 13-page petition dated 22 January to the National Chairman of the APC, Abdullahi Ganduje, Mr Onjeh demanded urgent action against Mr Agada for alleged gross misconduct.
The petition was titled “Petition Against Anti-party Activities by the Benue State APC Chairman and Others, Targeted at my Candidature.”
Mr Onjeh, a former chairman of Project Development Institute (PRODA), made several accusations including the alleged mishandling of party agents to orchestrate electoral rigging in favour of opposition candidate Abba Moro, the sitting senator for the district.
According to him, the actions of Mr Agada and his cohorts thwarted the democratic process and undermined the integrity of the party.
He alleged that the state APC chairman made copious cash contributions to the campaign of Mr Moro of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 25 February 2023 election through a proxy, Helen Etu.
He accompanied the petition with what he said was evidence to support his claim.
“On the 5th of December, 2022, at 9:19 am, in the heat of the electioneering campaign for the 2023 polls, Mr Agada transferred the sum of Five Million Naira (N5,000,000.00) only to a third party, one Helen Etu, and via an SMS, instructed her to transfer the same to Sen. Moro’s Fidelity Bank Account with account details; 5010191996. The lady transferred the aforementioned amount to the senator’s bank account immediately after she received the instruction from Mr. Agada. Proof of this transaction is presented in Exhibit A, attached to this petition.
“Furthermore, on 8th December 2022, at 3:48 pm, Mr Agada transferred another sum of Four Million Naira (N4,000,000.00) only to the same Helen Etu; and via SMS, directed her to transfer the same to Sen. Moro’s GTB Account with account details; 0027873390. Proof of this transaction is displayed as Exhibit B, attached to this petition,” he stated.
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| State chairman, Austin Agada |
Mr. Onjeh, a former president of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), explained that Mr Agada and his associates committed electoral fraud against him in the elections by employing compromised agents in Benue South, which ultimately contributed to the APC’s loss in the presidential election in the senatorial district.
“In my honest opinion, the success of election-day activity relies heavily on the party agents, especially in the rural areas where a lot of the electorate are illiterate and cannot readily identify relevant words and symbols on the ballot papers, hence they rely a lot on the party agents to guide them in casting their votes appropriately for the candidates of their choice. Therefore, the party’s agents can easily frustrate any candidate at the polls, if they wished to,” he said.
He also lamented that the Organising Secretary of the APC in Benue State, James Ornguga, initially assured him at a national retreat that the party had directed senatorial candidates to provide party agents for the 2023 Presidential and National Assembly elections.
He explained that this assurance led him to transfer N700,000 to Mr Ornguga’s account on 5 January 2023, to cover the registration fees for all the party’s agents participating in the polls in Benue South on 25 February 2023.
In the firm belief that I was going to have my agents at the Polling Units, I proceeded to draft my volunteers and deployed enormous resources to organise them. Even though it was relatively easier and cheaper for me to bring my volunteers on board because I had already trained most of them during the 2015 general elections, it still involved huge logistics for me to mobilise and re-orientate them for the 2023 General Elections,” noted Mr Onjeh in the petition, adding that on the eve of the election, Mr Ornguga revealed that Mr Agada and his allies had overridden his list of agents.
Mr Onjeh added, “Usually, when I am contesting in an election, I would set up an efficient election situation room, from where I receive regular updates on the goings-on at each polling unit. But during the last general election, the State Party Chairman and his cohorts successfully cut me off completely from the scheme of events, such that aside from my polling unit, I had no idea of what was going on in any other polling unit in Benue South.”
Alleged Collusion Between INEC, Opposition
The petitioner shed light on the alleged collusion between certain Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) officials and opposition members, painting a picture of systemic corruption that extended beyond party lines in the elections.
He said he was convinced “beyond doubt that some INEC staff at Makurdi were working in cahoots with Sen. Moro. We resorted to writing a protest letter to the National Chairman of INEC before he compelled the Commission’s Makurdi office to grant us access to the ballot papers, albeit belated.”
Mr Onjeh also said after the election, he called Mr Agada to request the list of party agents for filing a petition at the Tribunal, but that the chairman refused.
He further alleged that before the general election, the state PDP chairman visited the Deputy Governor of Benue State, Sam Ode, at his house in the Utako area of Abuja, pleading on his knees to work together to secure Mr Moro’s victory at the polls.
“Dr Ode said he was shocked to his marrow at Agada’s rather strange proposal, as he found it difficult to believe that a party’s state chairman could conspire to trade off his party’s senatorial candidate to the opposition. I am a man of honour, and I strongly believe that Dr Ode is equally a man of honour; therefore if called upon, he cannot deny my claim,” he said.
Mr Onjeh claimed that all the crises in the party in the Benue APC were traceable to the anti-party activities of the party’s leadership.
Allegations are baseless – APC chair
In an exclusive phone interview with PREMIUM TIMES, Mr Agada denied all the allegations levelled against him by Mr Onjeh.
He said he committed no wrong against his party or petitioner.
He expressed frustration at the circulating negative narratives aimed at tarnishing his reputation, particularly allegations of financial support to an opposition candidate who held various prestigious positions.
He emphasised that these claims were baseless and aimed at discrediting him unfairly.
He said, “Abba (Moro) has been a local government chairman, minister, board chairman of different parastatals, and also a serving senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Who is to give each other money? If I agree with what he’s saying that I worked against him and all of that, there should be proof where Abba paid me money.”
“A serving senator in a regime where the state was in a ruling party, their party was the ruling party under Ortom government, is he not the one that should give me money that is in opposition member to work against my party?”
Mr Agada pointed out that Mr Onjeh’s failure to secure votes across his hometown of Orokam and his lack of campaigning across the entire senatorial district were significant factors in his electoral defeat.
One thing that you can never change is truth. Mr Onjeh lost the election across Orokam where he is from, is it Austin? You have 102 wards, but you only went to 2 wards to campaign, is it me again?”
He added “Even if he doesn’t love me, everybody has his time. He fought me not to be chairman, I became chairman, he fought me not to be successful, I became successful by the fact that two out of three Senate seats were won under my reign, 10 out of 11 House of Representatives seats were won under my reign, 21 House of Assembly seats, governorship, and presidential that ran under Muslim-Muslim ticket in a Christian state.”
Mr Agada did not mince words in his criticism of Mr Onjeh, particularly regarding the latter’s alleged lack of support for the APC’s gubernatorial candidate despite being the party’s senatorial flag bearer in one of the districts.
“Onjeh who was holding our ticket that we gave him, performed abysmally poor should be held accountable to give an account of why the party performed badly. We went on a campaign with the governorship candidate round, where did we see Onjeh? Only one or two places. He didn’t sell himself. You are running against someone, and you are taking it lightly,” he added.
I’m ready to face a panel – Organising Secretary
On his part, Mr Orgunga stated that party leadership in the state had cooperated with Mr Onjeh, ensuring his list of agents was uploaded to the APC portal and forwarded to INEC as required.
He explained that complications arose when three House of Representatives candidates from Mr Onjeh’s zone, namely Blessing Onuh, David Ogewu, and Samuel Godday, expressed reluctance to rely on Mr Onjeh’s agents, citing a perceived lack of collaboration.
According to the organising secretary, the trio subsequently approached the then National Chairman, Abdullahi Adamu, who intervened by writing another letter to INEC, forwarding a fresh list of agents for the three candidates. Consequently, INEC dropped all of Mr Onjeh’s agents from the list.
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| Former APC Chairman, Abdullahi Adamu |
He explained that the party leadership under Mr Agada was not informed of this change until the day he went to INEC to collect agent tags, only to discover that tags for Zones A and B were allocated to him.
He said that the agent tags for Zone C were directly handed over to Messrs Onuh, Ogewu, and Godday, with no involvement of Mr Agada.
Mr Orgunga said Mr Onjeh was supposed to pay a considerable sum for the upload of his agents, but due to their cooperation with the leadership, he paid only N700,000 to Mr Agada’s team for the task.
He welcomed Mr Onjeh’s petition to the national chairman and offered his readiness to appear before any panel to provide clarifications that could benefit the party in the future.
“I will be happy to appear before any panel for clarifications which may save the party next time,” he said.
Benue APC speaks
In response to recent allegations made against Mr Agada, the Benue South APC chapter in a statement shared with PREMIUM TIMES on Saturday, described them as baseless.
The zonal chapter said Mr Agada is committed to the values and principles of the APC, stating that the allegations of anti-party activities, rigging, and financial misconduct levelled against the chairman are entirely false and lacking in substance.
It urged all members and stakeholders of the APC in Benue State to dismiss the spurious allegations against Mr Agada.
The statement was signed by the APC Zonal Chairman, Zone C, Bishop Ogbaji and other members of the executive.
The crisis between Mr Onjeh and the Benue party leaders adds to an existing crisis between Governor Hyacinth Alia and some Benue APC leaders that has ensured that the APC in Benue remains divided.
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