The Senatorial candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance for Abia South, Chief Chris Nkwonta, has said that the removal of incident form by the Independent Electoral Commission from use in the 2019 elections will reduce rigging to the barest minimum.
Nkwonta, who expressed this optimism, alleged that the Peoples Democratic Party took advantage of the form to rig him out during the 2015 elections.
The APGA candidate, who will be contesting against incumbent Senator for Abia South Senatorial Zone, Chief Enyinnaya Abaribe of the PDP, said his chances of defeating the incumbent was brighter now with the removal of the form.
Nkwonta, who spoke in an interview on the sideline of his sympathy visit to the traditional ruler of Etiti Ohazu Autonomous community in Aba, Eze Ishmeal Nnakwu, over the recent fire disaster at Nkwo Ngwa Timber Market, assured that Aba would experience tremendous infrastructural transformation under an APGA government come 2019.
According to him , the party which lost to the PDP in Abia state in 2015, had within the period fine-tuned its blueprint for the development of the state and Aba, its commercial city, in particular.
Meanwhile, he disclosed that the party would soon commence the reconstruction of the burnt section of the market to alleviate the suffering of the affected traders, noting that the gesture would be completed before the 2019 elections.
He said that the party had already asked for the details of what was destroyed in the fire incident and what was needed to help the affected traders cushion the effect of their losses.
Nkwonta, who had earlier visited the market to commiserate with the traders, said that the governorship candidate of the party, Mr. Alex Oti, had already called for an estimate of palliative measures to enable the traders to commence business, pending when full rehabilitation of the affected areas would commence.
A former Commissioner for Agriculture and the PDP House of Representatives candidate for Aba north and South Federal constituency, Chief Uzor Azubuike has donated N1million to the traders affected by the inferno to assist them to feed their families pending when they commenced business again. He condemned the politicization of the tragedy that befell the traders.
But Nkwonta regretted that the losses could have been minimal if there were access roads that would have enabled fire trucks to have easy access to the market in time to put out the fire.