From Idu Jude Abuja
The National Chairman of APGA, Barrister Sly Ezeokenwa, sees a brighter future after the party’s years of struggle for existence and protracted legal battles that ended at the Supreme Court recently. In this interview, he spoke on various issues including the travails of APGA and the dream of the founding fathers.
APGA is a political party known to be the voice of the entire Southeast politically, and with what is going on, do you think the dream of the founding fathers is realistic?
For us to grab a full understanding of the question you raised, it will warrant some kind of incursion into memory lane. First of all, I am trying to understand what led to the formation of APGA, especially during the present political dispensation and the idea of historical files that APGA shared with some political parties in the past. What is the vision and mission of the founding fathers of APGA, and what is the ideology of the party?
The next thing that comes up is that if you understand what the mission, vision, and mission of the founding fathers are, to what extent has APGA gone in achieving all these, and what steps are we taking because presently, we have been quite fortunate to have been handed over the mantle of leadership within the party and what we are doing within the party.
APGA as a political party was registered in 2002 under former President Olusegun Obasanjo and the founding fathers then, I recall as a young boy I had a series of discussions with them to understand what led to the formation of APGA and you must have heard the story about how the defunct UPGA, United Progressive Grand Alliance was initially stopped to be registered because INEC blocked that name because they said it has a semblance of another political party that was formally in existence. Incidentally, we have the Social Democratic Party (SDP) so I don’t know why it was blocked in the first place, which warranted the removal of units and the introduction of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and I believe that ‘All’ added to the name is better because when you talk of United progressives, you go back to the First Republic and of course the founding fathers then had some of the reasons that led to UPGA. But this time, APGA was formed as a brand new political party, which was not a consequence of some alliance but rather as a result of marginalization principally. Recall that from early 1998 to 1999, the Jos convention of PDP led to the candidacy of Olusegun Obasanjo as the Presidential candidate in 1999, and one of the founding fathers of G34, Dr. Alex Ekwueme, of the blessed memory, where the people came together with brilliant minds who came to push for a return to democracy.
And so, when the then Head of state, Abdulsalami Abubakar, gave the nod for power to return to civilians, those like minds came together as G34 and formed the Peoples Democratic Movement, which later metamorphosed into People’s Democratic Party, PDP. And because Dr. Alex Ekwueme was at the helm of affairs of PDM and G34, of course not discrediting those who contributed to building the structure then, like late Shehu Yar’Adua and other like minds that led to the amalgamation and ultimately metamorphosed into PDP.
So the point I am making is that there was that notion that the presumptive candidate was Dr. Alex Ekwueme. Of course, what happened at the Jos convention is a story for another day, but ultimately, the Igbo came out of that conversion bitter because they felt it was a high-powered scheming that led to the loss of Dr. Alex Ekwueme at that convention.
But looking at the result from that election principally, the five Eastern states massively voted for the PDP in that Presidential election notwithstanding the resentment that they felt at the outcome of that convention. They voted PDP and because we had the first term of Obasanjo as the President of Nigeria and now we have to bring in another historical fact, which is the civil war which was fought between 1967 and 1970 and how it turned out because the then Head of state proclaimed that there is no Victor, no Vanquished and professed to take steps to begin the 3R programme then towards fostering the unity of the country. But since the end of that civil war till date and I say this with every sense of responsibility, we have seen little or nothing to show that the South Easterners or the Igbos, and why I say South Easterners is because we should not circumscribe other victims of the war from neighboring South-South who were part of the Biafra struggle. We have our brothers in Delta State, Rivers State and some of our brothers in Beyelsa. In other places from where we have larger pockets of Igbo Nation, in 1979, an Igbo man, Dr. Alex Ekwueme, incidentally was elected the Vice-President. But after 1998 and the subsequent coming of the Obasanjo Presidency, there was little or nothing to show that the Igbo were part of that government, especially during the first tenure. And I can tell you that probably it was the emergence of APGA that led to certain decisions that the then President took during his second tenure in office. That now saw the rise of prominent Igbo men and women in that cabinet. And if you recall, one of the prominent Igbo men in that cabinet was Professor Charles Soludo, who at first held fort the chief economic adviser to the President, and subsequently, we had the likes of Oby Ezekwesili, the likes of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Ndi Okereke Onyiuke, Aruma Ote and so on. You can speculate that that was the crux of the success during the formation and registration of APGA as a political party.
Beyond the historical background you have given, are there other reasons for the formation of APGA?
Be that as it may, the point I am trying to make is that the precursor to the formation and registration of APGA as a political party is marginalization, whether perceived or real. So, some Igbo men came together and felt that the Southeast needed a voice of their own. Secondly, if you remove the issue of marginalization, and follow the history of Nigeria from the pre-Independence struggle and Independence struggle, you will notice that most of the political parties we have were built along regional lines especially the First and Second Republic, when you talk about the NPC, the NCNC, the Action group. The same thing happened in the second Republic when we had the likes of the NPN, which had most of the North, the NPP with the late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe from the South East, and the UPN of Obafemi Awolowo from the Western states.
It showed from time memorial that Nigeria as a country had had its political parties built along regional lines and when you have such political parties, it gives room for proper National integration. Let me explain, for example, during the First Republic, when we had a parliamentary system of government, unlike the presidential that we have now, where we need to have the absolute majority to form a government, and because no political party was able to garner the needed majority in the first Republic, it now led to a coalition between the Northern Peoples Congress Ahamadu Bello, Saduana of Sokoto, and the NCNC of Late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. This led to the government of National unity, which produced Tafawa Balewa as then prime Minister and Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe as the ceremonial President. And we also have something similar because, in the presidential system, we don’t need to form a coalition to form a government. After all, in the presidential system, we know that the Executive is different from the legislature. But the fact remains that there is still some sort of coalition, and that was what led to a seeming merger between the North and the East and that ultimately threw up Dr. Alex Ekwueme as the vice president and Shehu Shagari as the President. I can tell you that it was the first time the Igbo didn’t play regional politics. Notwithstanding, they ended up being shortchanged because, in PDP, one cannot say it belongs to any region or ethnic group; rather, it was more or less touted to be a political party floated to represent the vast majority of Nigerians. But we had the All Peoples Party because you remember that was the first thing we talked about: the ANPP was the then APP, which had the majority of the seats in the North, and then we had the Alliance for Democracy AD in the West. But the PDP that the Igbo now came and embraced, won the entire states in the South East but still when the then President was picking his cabinet, I didn’t see that recognition that he gave to the people of the South East, that could correspond or correlate with the quantum of votes that they gave to PDP in the fourth Republic.
So ultimately, there was that quest and need to have that political party and again like I said earlier, I have had this topic with so many Igbo and this time a popular cleric’s name was withheld; he said for him personally, why he was part of those who stood for a political party that the Igbo could identify with was because of the marginalization over the years at various instances.
If you recall, during the Mbadinuju saga, and if you recall vividly, there was a point where Anambra State was getting zero allocation for some reason tagged to be contractual obligations, and so they were not deducted at the source. I don’t know whether we have seen or heard such happen before. Incidentally, as a lawyer, I don’t think in contractual obligations that there are legally recognized modes of enforcing the terms of the contract, and rather, it is not for a president who feels he has the power to sit in the comfort of his office to determine how the allocation of a state should go. As a result, teachers were owed, and workers and civil servants were not paid. Also, students were at home for a year, and the people said they knew enough was enough. And that we needed a voice that we could call our own. Some persons lost their jobs, and that is why I always pay glowing tribute to our founding fathers, even though some contributed but weren’t even members of the party. There was this incident I recall with nostalgia those processes that led to the formation of APGA, and I recall prominent names like Barrister Mrs Ifeyinwa Obegolu, perhaps a legal officer at INEC, who stood her ground that this political party has fulfilled all requisite requirements for registration as a political party. And upon formation and registration of APGA as a political party , it ultimately cost her, her job. Today, she is a member, Board of trustees of our party. We remain eternally grateful to her and some other people who worked in INEC then but stood their ground to ensure that the right thing was done.
If you must know, APGA was not the only party formed at that time. There were three other parties formed, including the Labour Party, which brought the number of political parties to six.
Consequently, the remarkable year was 2003 because that was the first outing of APGA and I can tell you with every sense of responsibility that APGA won the five South East states in 2003 but of course, the same man perpetrated the injustice and election rigging ever witnessed in this country and APGA was denied all the seats in the National Assembly, Houses of Assembly of those states and the Governorship seats of those states they won. It was a monumental fraud, and luckily enough, for us, we were able to retrieve the mandate that was handed over to the first governor elected on the platform of APGA, who incidentally is Mr. Peter Obi.
Like I always said, with his starling performance in office, APGA truly meant well for the country, and that brings me back again to the vision and mission of the founding fathers of APGA. I can say that APGA was set up to fight the marginalization of the South Easterners within the context of the Nigerian political system. But over the years, it has grown bigger than that, because we have a mantra. The motto of the party is “ Be your brothers and Sisters keeper. The main ideology is the progressive ideology of leaving no one behind, and that ideology made APGA the people’s movement. For us, what we are trying to achieve as a political party is that any government being controlled by APGA, there are certain indices we need to see. We expect to see a populist government. We expect to see a government that is prudent in the management of people’s resources. We expect a more responsible government. We expect a people-centric government. And that is the Hallmark of the first APGA governor, the second APGA governor, and ultimately the present governor of Anambra State. I can say that we have been fortunate in this auspicious time in the nation’s history to have been handed over the party, and what we are trying to do now is to decentralize the party as much as possible and remove the focus around the South East. Because, bad governance knows no region or any group. So no matter what you do, bad governance is bad governance anywhere; it affects everybody, and so for us in APGA, we now have key points that we need to introduce, and as I said, the principal among them is looking at our Ideology. APGA believes in true federalism, which is number one, and that is the progressive manifesto of APGA. If for any reason, we have the APGA government at the center, the first thing we are going to do is seek a review of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria because that is the work tool and I am one of those who believe that we cannot achieve much with the present constitution.
There must be proper devolution of powers and when you have this, that is the only way the federated units and subordinate regions can have confidence because each region will be allowed to develop at its own pace. The situation we found ourselves in the country, where virtually 36 states of the Federation and FCT proceed to Abuja every month to receive handouts, has stifled development in all the regions. And if we do it for the next 100 years, we will continue to run around in circles. And so for us, the only path to a truly progressive Nigeria is an entrenchment of true federalism and devolving of powers properly to the federating units as it is obtainable in other parts of the world. So, if we continue this way, we are not going to have any meaningful development. We are going to be import dependent, which would always weaken the naira, weaken the economy, and continue to engender unemployment and insecurity.
Take, for instance, the police architecture in the country, and I have granted an interview on that severally. And I always ask, what business does the inspector General of Police have in protecting a man in Aninri Local Government in Enugu State? It is a very simple thing.
In an advanced country, the security apparatus is handed over to the government at the center because the primary role of the central government is to protect the territorial integrity of the country from external aggression. Everything about the internal security architecture is left to the locals. They are the ones who can identify the criminals at their localities; they know their hideouts, and because of the insecurity problems in the country, you can now see that that is what is enthroning every other facet of the problem that the country is facing.
Farmers can’t go to markets, people can’t even move their goods from one portion of the country to the other, and when foods and services cannot move freely, ultimately, revenue accruing to the country continues to depreciate, and the country plunges into inflation.
These are the issues we articulated in our manifesto and I always tell anyone who cares to listen even at this point that we are still trying to see if we have a manifesto review because as the day goes by, so many problems keep popping up that warrant the review for our mode of operation as a political party.
I believe that APGA as a political party has the solution to the myriads of problems facing our country and we have now been taunted as a political party trying to proffer a solution; we will always have brotherly governance and refer you to the government of Peter Obi and his success and the current government we have in Anambra and you can see the accolades that have been coming in.
During my meditation, I asked myself, “What is the highest quality that a leader can have; I think it is empathy because you must empathize with the plight of your citizens because that is what would make you realize that the proper thing to do is not to allocate resources to your friends and allies but rather to the long-suffering masses. And that is why we have policies geared at lifting the vulnerable in society. If you recall, I said earlier that in APGA, we used to say in Igbo that we have the spirit of ‘onye Ayana nwanne’ (Leaving no one behind), and that is why today in Anambra, we have the free education policy from elementary school to Senior Secondary school. We even experience people from neighbouring states sending their children to nearby communities in Anambra for education and that falls in the ideologies of the party. When Awolowo was alive, he was very much interested in some social capital. He has free education where some people went to school free of charge; we now have it in Anambra. I believe this is the first truly free education we have had in this country because before now, we had declared free education but introduced charges here and there. Again, we have free delivery and pre and post antenatal services.
We are not interested in where you come from unlike what people have in different states where they disparage the Indigenous and non indigenous people. The fact is that when the righteous is in power, the people rejoice. That is what is obtained today and I always use Anambra as a model of governance because that is the only state controlled by APGA.
Now that the Supreme has validated your leadership, with the programmes lined up in APGA, changing the manifesto, and moving from regional to National, do you have the backing of the NASs Members of the party?
I would like to be as brief and short as possible; there are no crises in APGA, and that is the only way I can answer the question. What we had was an artificially engineered INEC crisis, which the Supreme Court has delivered its judgement in our favor, and that is why I said that it was no case at all.
As I said before, I placed this blame on the doorsteps of INEC, and I don’t think that I would go further than that. Why I pointed at INEC was that INEC purported to have enforced a non-existent order of court recognizing a total stranger as an officer of the party. That was what happened and if you take up your dictionary and check up the meaning of faction, you will see that when there is a faction, there is presumptively a group in place and that is either a division or disagreement and that group becomes polarized, not when you are a group still intact, coordinated, still united and some strangers who have no business whatsoever with that group goes about shopping for a court order or court judgement to come and take over the structure of that group and when they couldn’t get, they now sort the intervention of the supposed umpire. Let me draw an analogy. Incidentally, I always have discussions with many of them because if you know how the Nigerian system works, the average Nigerian man is deeply religious. And I believe that part of the things you do to foster development is to try as much as possible to bring the religious leaders in agreement with what our development plans are.
As a political party, we have discussions because they whiled religious powers over their followers. And I asked a very simple question, and said as the head of the church, can an adherent of another religious group come to a court order to take over your position? He incidentally called me to see how to settle the issue in APGA.
The party had a convention as demanded by INEC, and the party notified INEC of the venue for its convention venue, where executives were elected the following day. The impostor said he conducted a factional convention, and I said how and under what authority. The president of Nigeria is President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and we know the people he contested the election with as Nigerians; you know that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi were all contestants during the election. Sowore was a candidate, Kwankwaso was a candidate at their various political parties and we knew who got elected. And another day, someone says I have an order from a High Court in Zimbabwe that I am now the President of Nigeria, and everyone just sat back and allowed him to administer the country. The problem we have in this country is that we condone a lot of madness, and that is why issues like this will keep occurring. When people ask these questions, I get unnecessarily emotional because we are the enablers of these things. And I blame the media because nobody does investigative journalism anymore, and they should be able to come out and report these things.
Against Insinuations of APGA being a party for the South East alone, when shall we have APGA Chairman of Northern and Western states?
As I told you earlier, we will start having them. But I can tell you something. While we are trying as much as possible to foster a National political party, we equally have to be wary of the risk you run. Because you must juxtapose these arguments side by side because the leaders of your party go a long way in determining the faith of the party. So, you must be sure of the level of commitment one has to the party and probably that is why the party has decided during the last convention because one mantra that we have all heard, when we were little, was that the youth are the leaders of tomorrow and you keep seeing old men being recycled in various positions of leadership.
And APGA as a political party decided to take the bull by the horns by electing very young sets of National officers and so instead of talking the talk, we decided to walk the talk but at the same time as I said, everything that you are doing, you must be very careful not to derail your achievement and that is where passion, commitment and understanding comes in.
So you must be sure that if you are handing over the leadership of the party to any individual, such individuals or individuals must be people who are committed to the ideals of the political party. Sadly enough, it appears much of this concentration is in the South East. This is not an indictment of other regions. Probably, their historical issues and alignment might show where their allegiance is. Just like we all know, APGA is a party that has been riddled with all manner of crises since its inception, and at times I believed it was deliberate to stifle the growth of the party, for every single time we had ten steps forward, we got some eight backward as a result of one court issue or the other.
From what you said that happened in the past, do you foresee the only APGA Governor leaving APGA as an Orphan?
Well, I am not a prophet, and there is no way I can answer this kind of question without being a prophet. And when you say do I foresee, I am not Governor Soludo. But if you are talking about the seeming crises we have in the party, then I can tell you that it is a thing of the past. I don’t think you remember that Governor Soludo is the National leader of APGA. As a political party, knowing full well that it is in existence in a country with diverse ethnic groups that most of the negotiations and decisions may be needed to arrive at any political decision, and when that quest for nation building arises, APGA will always be at the forefront of what will benefit the country and the man to lead the discussion, is the National leader of the party, who incidentally is Governor Soludo you are talking about.
Despite the setbacks, what are these things you proposed to roll out for the implementation and advancement of the party?
You know, as a political party, there are limits to what you can do. Before I came on board, I had a programme for the party, which I called the ‘DRIVE’ principle. And that forms the core mandate of what we set out to achieve in office. First of all, D stands for discipline. We felt that the best way to grow the party was to foster a culture of discipline within the party. As a person who was a member of the party, upon formation or an undergraduate, and subsequently joined the legal team of the party when Peter Obi was the Governor of Anambra State, I later became the Legal Adviser of the party in Anambra and later proceeded to become the legal Adviser, National body of APGA. So, I have been a member of the party from day one. Apart from the offices I held before, I had been opportune to be a member of various committees, both at the state and at the National level. Having said that the first thing I realized is that what has stifled the growth of the party has been the cases of indiscipline, where members of the party engage in gross indiscipline and go scot-free. We have seen instances where someone was elected on the platform of a party, he defects to another party but decides to come back during an election to collect another nomination form of the party because the party would shake him or give him a pat on the back. You can’t have meaningful growth in an atmosphere of indiscipline, as far as I am concerned, and that was what led to the coinage of that acronym DRIVE, and the crux of it is discipline. The second one is to rebrand and reposition APGA. As I said earlier, APGA is more of a regional party than a national party, and that toga has stuck with the party from formation since when we came into office and what we have decided to do is to rebrand the party. And the first rebranding is for Nigerians to begin to see APGA as a party not attached to a particular section of the country. We want to see the party as national where every Nigerian, irrespective of tribe or religious inclination, can come into the party and express themselves within the confines of the law. It is also to rebrand the party as a youth-friendly party, and we have an interesting demographic from the last elections. You can observe that for the first time, the majority of young people constituted the majority of those votes in that election. The data was out at close to 60%, and if you can have 55- 50 %of young people coming to vote, it means that the young people are in a better position to decide on what affects their states or country, meaning that they have their destiny in their hands..
Then the third one is inclusive leadership, and I mean not just comprehensive, purposeful, and insightful, but such that people are allowed to operate at every stage of their service. The only way to market your party is to showcase all you have done to the public, and for us, we have achieved much in Anambra that can be the bedrock to whatever success the party can record tomorrow. And then the final one is the E’,’ which is the expansion programme, and by that, we mean how we can have inroads to other parts of the country, and that is the drive acronym. And for us, I will always see the Bible as the most interesting piece of literature in modern history, and remember one of the verses, where Jesus tells his disciples that anyone who puts his hands in the plough and looks back is no longer worthy of heaven!
So we are determined. Our hands are firmly on the plow, and we are not looking back, irrespective of artificial crises that people have been trying to ferment around the party. As the Anambra State Governor would say, “ Ours is an agenda with a deadline. We are not going to be here forever.
Briefly, what can you say about the Supreme Court victory?
Yes, we give God the Glory, and this is not just my Victory alone; neither is it a victory for the NWC; it is true for the justice system in Nigeria, through which the common man would have lost hope of being part of Nigeria.
We are calling on all aggrieved persons to toe the way of honour and be part of APGA by picking a membership revalidation registration application form.
The legal victory should serve as a turning point for the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and a renewed opportunity to strengthen the commitment to serving the Nigerian people.
Moving forward, we must harness this momentum to consolidate our internal structures, deepen our unity, and re-energize our mission of promoting good governance, equity, and inclusive development.
We declare that there is NO VICTOR and NO VANQUISHED! Together, we have the onerous responsibility that this party not only does not die in our hands but ensures that it lives up to the desired expectations of being a major player in the quest for engendering a truly progressive Nigeria.
In particular, I commend the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Hon. Justice Kudirat Olatokunbo Kekere-Ekun, for her exemplary leadership and courage in ensuring that the integrity of the judicial process remains intact. Her fortitude and dedication to justice are a testament to the resilience of our nation’s judiciary.
While we recognize the initial missteps, INEC must ensure full respect and adherence to the Supreme Court’s ruling in the future. This will further strengthen the credibility of our electoral process and ensure the trust of the Nigerian people.
To our National Leader, His Excellency, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, I offer my deepest appreciation. His unwavering support for APGA and its leadership throughout this challenging journey has been a source of strength and inspiration. His vision for a better Nigeria and his commitment to our party’s ideals have kept us united and resolute in the face of adversity.
