APGA leadership tussle
Why I am floating a new party –Okorie

“By the grace of God, by next week (this week) we should
be presenting that new party to the public via a world news conference. We expect that by then INEC should have inspected and verified our claims”

By Nkiru Evongwa
Friday, March 23, 2012

Recently, the founding Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, (APGA) Chief Chekwas Okorie returned the Certificate of Registration of the party that has been in his custody since 2002 to INEC, thus ending his eight-year legal tussle with the National Chairman, Chief Victor Umeh over the leadership of APGA.

In this exclusive interview with CHIDI NNADI in Enugu, Okorie disclosed that he and his associates decided to end the tussle as the spiritual leader of APGA, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu who they expected to reconcile them with their opponents had passed on.

Therefore, he said they have decided to float a new party since APGA has been ‘kidnapped’ from the original owners, saying they have taken the spirit of APGA and left behind only the body for those who hijacked the party.
Excerpts:

My journey in APGA and why I am forming a new party
There is no doubt in the minds of Nigerians that I founded APGA as a political party. And it was out of great concern that since the Igbo was created as a race and we joined the Nigerian union as a nation, no registered national political party has been registered based on the initiative of the Igbo. So, I felt that was an aspect of our politics that needed to be corrected urgently. It was not a knowledge that came to me over night; I had made an attempt in 1996, the party was not registered; in 1998, we made a second attempt; in 2001\2002, we made a third attempt and it was not successful.

And by that singular achievement, I got myself into the history book as the first Igbo man to found a registered national political party in Nigeria; two, the first Igbo man to become the national chairman of a registered political party, that also came with its own challenge to make sure that the thing didn’t fizzle out like most things other people started: newspapers, associations that never materialized into parties. So, the challenge was there. When I got in, the few parties that were available all politicians had found one position or the other in them; so the field was not filled with politicians who were looking for where to go to, it was difficult to find people to make it up.

It was in that process that we brought in Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, it was in that process, shortly before then we brought in Victor Umeh and later Peter Obi joined and many others. I was barely two years in office from the time I became substantive chairman, that was on January 10, 2003, when we had our convention; by December 2004, there was a rebellion against my leadership and that was coming from a treasurer who I had not only recruited, but also appointed first protem national treasurer; then he resigned that we didn’t have the chance of being registered and when the party became registered, he came back led by Barrister JSP Nwokolo, pleading with me to get him accommodated again in the party.

I didn’t mind that he lost faith in the exercise, we brought him, but at that time we already had a national treasurer and I appointed him vice chairman, South-east zone over and above some people who were there before him, out of my soft-spot for him. Then as a result of the nomination of Peter Obi as our candidate for governorship, the treasurer then, Chief Ralph Okey Nwosu blamed it on me and had his own revolt and bolted out of the party. It was at that point that Victor Umeh came back pleading with me that he deviated and he would be very happy if I would bring him back to the position he was before; and that was a position zoned to Anambra State.

Again, based on that soft-spot I brought him back to the position. It was from this closer position as treasurer that he plotted the crisis in the party. So, I looked at what I brought into the party, how we have been able to make it acceptable in at least the South-east zone and this man didn’t share in the vision and I thought I shouldn’t allow him to get away with that. And, of course, I saw the hand of the presidency at the time, the Obasanjo’s presidency, the support that he was having, because I knew his capacity then to implement anything financial-wise because I was the one funding his coming to meetings and his signatures are there signing for allowances.

The first thing that happened was that the presidency had demanded through their own agent, some of the Igbo men who were top in the Obasanjo presidency and they prevailed on Guobadia to recognise a treasurer as chairman of a party so much so that the then Secretary to Government of the Federation, Chief Uffot Ukaette wrote a formal letter to Guobadia to please explain the situation of APGA leadership and Guobadia wrote back and gave me a copy that APGA have not had a convention to change its leadership and that I remained the chairman of APGA. I was pleased with that position of INEC because that was what the law said. Three months after, they waited for Guobadia’s tenure to end in May and Prof Maurice Iwu came and, of course, they had Prof Iwu with them and he began directly to show how loyal he would be in that position by recognising our treasurer as chairman, a thing that has never happened before, INEC had never done it before and they have not done it again; but INEC wrote a letter giving recognition to our treasurer who was number 12 in the line of succession in the party.

Knowing that the presidency did everything to frustrate the registration of APGA and was therefore determined to destroy the soul of the party, then the option left was for me to go to court. Before we knew it, the thing became more complicated. At the end of the day, we made about 25 attempts to reconcile, especially when the late Dim Odumegwu-Ojukwu’s role in the matter had become open and public; so, I felt that the answer was reconciliation and there were 25 attempts and none yielded result; some of these we initiated, some we pleaded with groups to initiate.

And I had a difficulty because my regard for Ikemba was predominant and everybody knew it; so, I couldn’t find myself going into open confrontation with him, I couldn’t find myself floating another political party to be in rivalry with him over a political space in the same area because each party has to have its own base and I am an Igbo man. So, I kept exploring the reconciliatory option until unfortunately he passed on.

He was the one that could have brought about peace and those who made peace impossible were the same people that are still around. And now that he has passed on, is it the people who made peace impossible that I will now expect to have peace with me? I called my friend and associates after we lost the last case in court, we still had options, it was a federal high court judgment, we had options of appeal in the Appeal Court, in the Supreme Court, we have live 23 cases; so, we decided that enough is enough, all that energy, all that resources which we get from our own personal income, not from a state treasury like my opponents can be channeled into floating another political party and the law has allowed for a new party to be floated after meeting certain conditions.

Floating a new party
By the grace of God, by next week (this week) we should be presenting that new party to the public via a world news conference. We expect that by then INEC should have inspected and verified our claims. We have written INEC and INEC has given us the condition to fulfill, we have fulfilled part of it and the remaining ones will be fulfilled this week and by next week they should come for inspection. And since we are not making any false claim, it is going to be easy for them to verify our claims and then next week will be to present it to the world.

Features of our new party and APGA
It is like the same father. For instance, no matter how you change the DNA of APGA, it will still point to one biological father. One thing that does not exist in the English dictionary is former founder. So, APGA is still my baby, but nothing is unprecedented. Remember the late Waziri Ibrahim floated the NPP and when Zik came and he felt overwhelmed, he moved on and founded GNPP and the difference was very narrow and he used it in the Second Republic. Yes, the party will be very similar in the sense that the orientation is the same, it is the same blood flowing in the two of them. The only thing we have done is that we have taken back the spirit in APGA and we are putting that spirit in the new formation. APGA is like a kidnapped child and we have left the body for the kidnappers and no matter how benevolent you are to a kidnapped child, he will not call you father. So, while the body is there, the spirit is out. If anybody is doubting about what I mean about the spirit being out, the person should watch in the next one, two months and you will now see that it is the same vision that is being promoted elsewhere. And those who never shared in the vision will remain confused with the body they have kidnapped and before you know it anybody remaining there will also be noted as belonging to a body of political kidnappers.
APGA was set up to pursue a number of ideals, including a national conference, true federalism, and resource control; if you go to the APGA constitution it is within the aims and objectives of the party.

[b]Our new party and major thrust of its manifesto
First of all, you know that a political party by definition is an organization that seizes political power for the benefit of the people and when you go to the Nigerian constitution, the welfare of the people is key. So, our new party is envisioned in the former one we have left, we target the masses as a means of developing the country; it is going to be a mass movement, it will start from the grassroots. Now if it is a mass movement, the Nigerian masses must be able to feel comfortable in the new party wherever they are; we will address all these issues of citizenship, indigeneship and settlership, these areas are primary and cannot be done by force, but through dialogue and that is why they are part and parcel of both our manifesto and constitution in terms of aims and objectives, in the issues of national conference. We believe that the Nigerian economy will never grow if each area is not given enough incentive to explore and exploit its own comparative advantage and one of the ways to encourage them is to give them adequate share of the revenue derived from such areas. In the area of security we will continue to stop the centralization of the police force, we support state and community policing. Nigeria is too big to be effectively policed by one central command.
[/b]
APGA seen as an Igbo culture and its possible effects on the new party

[b]Well, the new party is not going to be Igbo based, it’s going to be a national political party, at least, that is what the constitution of Nigeria and the Electoral Act envisaged. I can tell you that the conditions for registering a party before and even now; in fact, it is more emphasized now that the national executives must represent two-third of the states of the federation. I will tell you that something has gone terribly wrong since we founded APGA, never mind that we have a government in Imo to make it two; we ought to have gone beyond the South-east by now. Have you forgotten that in 2007, APGA recorded zero result nationwide in a general election and we have a governor who could not get even one seat in the state assembly of his state of origin. And just recently there was a re-run election in the federal House of Representatives in Imo State where you even think that the governor is at the height of his popularity, he was seven months in office when the re-run took place, and the PDP won that election in Imo State.[/b]

http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/politics/2012/mar/23/politics-23-03-2012-003.html

this new party will go far because apga is lost and stunted
also chekwas understands nigerian national politics
kudos to him

Typical Nigerian this man is. Rather than work towards resolving the issue with the current party,they come up with ideas that creating a completely new one makes all the problems go away.

Kobojunkie: Typical Nigerian this man is. Rather than work towards resolving the issue with the current party,they come up with ideas that creating a completely new one makes all the problems go away.

i believe the man tried over the past 3 or 4 years to resolve this but the peter obi and victor umeh mafia seized the part completely
the problem is not even that, the probelm is that they turned apga into an igbo party. again even at that, they cannot win elections in the SE talk less of other zones
apga failed is still losing elections to pdp because people don't see the difference
if you read this man's views, you will see that he wants to create a party that tackles the main issues in nigeria