The APC has warned the Abia Assembly about the threat of suspending the governor.

The All Progressive Congress in Abia State has warned the State House of Assembly against acting on a threat to suspend its Minority Leader, Chijioke Chukwu of Bende North, for expressing his views on zoning in the state.

Last week, Chukwu said in an interview with a national newspaper (not Punch) that the agitation over the 2023 governorship zoning was heating up the polity and a ploy to divert attention away from the state’s current Peoples Democratic Party-led administration’s shortcomings.

Following his remarks, the House leadership was said to have asked him to apologise or face being suspended.

“We have to make it clear that the APC sees the threat as an affront to democracy and will not tolerate it in any way,” Perfect Okorie, the party’s state secretary, said in a statement. In fact, the party’s position is that a threat to the Minority Leader of the House, who is an APC member, is a threat to the party as a whole.

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“It is not about him as a person; he is there to represent his constituents and the APC, and he has remained committed to the party’s principles and tenets.

“He has remained the state’s voice of opposition, and they will not be able to dissuade him from standing up for what is right in any way.

“In Abia, democracy must be allowed to flourish. Nobody has threatened to suspend members of the PDP in the National Assembly, including those from Abia, for criticizing President Muhammadu Buhari on several occasions.

“The party encourages Hon. Chukwu to speak out when and where necessary, and to continue to criticize all government policies that are detrimental to the welfare and well-being of the people of Abia State,” says the statement.