The founder and pioneer National Chairman of the All-Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Chief Chekwas Okorie, in this interview with KENNETH OFOMA, takes a deep dive into the current political developments in the country and comes up with very strong prognosis and postulations ahead of the 2027 general elections.
What of the proposed local government electoral commission?
It’s a welcome development because before the argument was that since we are talking about devolution of power, why not allow the local government administration and election management to be handled by the states but everybody have seen how the state governors hijacked it and made a mess of it and that is at the root of the poor leadership recruitment we have even at that level because thugs, criminals, people who are hired to carry ballot boxes for the governors have been rewarded in return with being asked to become councilors and chairmen of councils. So now you are bringing in criminals just because of the way you reward criminals to go and preside over the resources of the entire local government.
What are you expecting from there?
In those days retired teachers and retired public and civil servants were the ones who went for the councilors and chairmen of councils and they were doing very well. But now touts are being rewarded with those critical positions and you claim that they have been elected, otherwise how can you justify or rationalize that any party that is in power in a particular win 100 per cent of elections in that particular state. So, if it is managed from the center, but again a separate body other than INEC as the proposed bill, then it simply means therefore that, and then of course during elections the infrastructure INEC has will also be used by this new body to conduct the local government elections since all our local government elections don’t hold on the same day.
Some states make it three years, some do two or four years as the case may be, so you may not have to run local government elections in all 774 local government areas in the country in one day. So, it will be better to have it and you will begin to have local governments that are balanced and the governors will now mind their business because there are some people who belong to other parties other than the governor’s party that will not yield to the whims and caprices of these governors. And you will begin to have reasonable, credible people being recruited at those levels because the votes of the rural community will matter, they know themselves, they know their people, they know those they want to elect to represent them instead of imposing criminals and thugs and all sorts of characters on the people.
Which way for you politically now since the Supreme Court has ruled that Sly Ezeokenwa is the National Chairman of APGA as against Edozie Njoku your man?
You asked a relevant question and it’s something that should worry most people not because of me but because of the fate of APGA. But let me tell you that the Supreme Court did not give the judgment to Sly, what the Supreme Court did is not different from what they did in the case of the recent one they did with PDP. The Supreme Court simply said that no court has jurisdiction over the internal affairs of the political party. And so, because unfortunately by doing that the Supreme Court now announced that the trial court and the Appeal court that Edozie had won earlier did not have the jurisdiction to meddle into the internal affairs of the party, neither does itself the Supreme Court had the jurisdiction, the other people ran to the media to celebrate victory. Just like after the judgment of PDP the Sam Anyanwu group was the first to start celebrating victory until the C-T-C became more available and they saw that actually the Supreme Court did not say that Sam Anyanwu is the secretary but that it is the party that will decide so everybody began to readjust.
So, in the case of APGA, out of anger or whatever reason, Edozie Njoku acted a bit hastily by throwing in the towel. But when I read that judgment, I saw that nowhere was Sly mentioned, they simply said that it is not within the jurisdiction of even the Supreme Court.
However, I took a resolution, since the question you asked was related to me as a person, I made a decision immediately after Edozie Njoku, who was the arrow head of the other side, threw in the towel, all my associates we met quickly decided we are not leaving APGA. I’m the founder of APGA. Peter Obi came and left; in fact, it was Peter Obi that initiated the entire crisis in APGA during my time. He sponsored the crisis to the end and Willie Obiano followed from there and did exactly the same thing. And Peter Obi is now a former governor; Obiano is now a former governor, so Soludo will one day become a former governor. In fact, he will have his day with the people of Anambra State in November this year. If he survives it, he will have another four years, if he fails to survive it, he becomes a one-term governor, it’s not unusual, Anambra people are used to one-term governors. But is there a former founder?
There is no former founder anywhere in the world, so I’m still there and if I’m still kicking and strong. Even though I’m now 72 years old but that’s not too old to be active, all these Abubakar Atiku them are much more senior. So, I decided that I will remain to rebuild APGA at one point or the other and bring it back to the center and bring it back to the original vision.
It was not the intention of PGA to become even an Igbo party. It was the intention of APGA to become a contribution to Nigerian party politics based on Igbo initiative. The founding of APGA was the first time an Igbo man founded a registered political party since 1923. By the time it was registered we were looking at over 80 years or about 80 years party politics started in Nigeria without an Igbo man seeing the need to found a political party that the machinery of its leadership will be in their control as their own contribution to party politics in Nigeria.
Chief Obafemi Awolowo saw it and his Yoruba associates and formed the Action Group. In fact, NCNC was founded by a Yoruba man, Herbert Macaulay, who actually started with NNDP which now metamorphosed into NCNC, Nnmdi Azikiwe became secretary general and later became leader of the party upon the death of Herbert Macaulay. Ahmadu Bello saw that coming and may be guided by the colonial masters who founded NPC.
The Hausa people of the North needed a political identity through Aminu Kano they founded NEPU. And later the same man founded PRP which had a strong base in Kano and extended to a few other places. The Kanuri people saw the same thing and Waziri Ibrahim who first of all was part of Borno Youth Movement founded NPP, in fact NPP was founded by Waziri Mohammed and later he left it for Zik to go and again form GNPP, Great Nigeria Peoples Party. Even Chief J S Tarka saw the need for their regional bloc to have political identity in terms of political party, he founded United Middlebelt Congress UMBC.
Ndigbo didn’t see that, they were comfortable coming under the umbrella of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe whom they always coalesced around. But when Dr Azikiwe was not there, that was the question I asked myself when I in 1995/96 when Dr Azikiwe was already advanced and was already withdrawing from active politics, and of course in 1996 he died. Since we didn’t have any person with that type of stature or clout to enter other people’s party and dominate it, it’s better we founded our own. So, I began in 1996 to lead the formation of a party based on Igbo initiative. We didn’t succeed.
We tried again in 1998, we didn’t succeed. We tried the third time in 2001 and succeeded in getting APGA registered. It was so celebrated, Igbo people, even the late Justice Eze Ezobu who was the President General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo at the time in an emotional tone he said that if he died that day we brought the certificate to his house here in Enugu that if he died that day he will know what to tell Dr. Azikiwe and Dr. Michael Okpara and others that his eyes saw the formation of a political party to promote the identity of our people and for which our people will use for political engagement in Nigeria.
That was the extent of the emotion, it was so celebrated that Ohanaeze Ndigbo for the first time in its history gave me a traditional title, “Okwaturu Enyi” Ndigbo. They had never given anybody dead or alive till today, except the posthumous honour they gave to Chief Iwuanyanwu, and Prof. Joe Irukwu and Prof George Obiozor. Those are the three Ohanaeze posthumous awards. But there was nobody given the chieftaincy title when the person was alive except me. It was all in celebration of that feat. Unfortunately, Igbo ruined it but by the grace of God the party has not totally died because many parties that were formed at the same time had all died, they no longer exist. So today APGA is the second oldest party in Nigeria. So, all we need to do is to be patient to make sure we retrieve it from those who have held it hostage and re-launch it and it may be as early as 2027.
