There’re no factions in APGA, only tendencies – Azike There’re no factions in APGA, only tendencies – Azike Posted by: BOLDWIN ANUGWARA on June 12, 2013 in Politics 1 Comment 0 share [By MAXWELL ODITTA] Chief Ziggy Azike was the 2007 governorship candidate of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) in Imo State. Today, he is the Chairman of the Building and Crisis Review of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) a committee that comprises the likes of Senator Chris Anyanwu, Uche Ekwunife and Chief Onwuka Ukwa. Chief Azike is a member of the Body of Benchers, the body responsible for the formal call to bar of persons seeking to be legal practitioners in Nigeria. He also represented Imo State at the National Political Reform Conference of 2005. In this interview with Head of Politics, MAXWELL ODITTA, Azike declares that there are no factions, no crisis in APGA only tendencies and divergence of views. All of a sudden, it seems the crisis in the All Progressives Grand Alliance is beginning to abate. All the major stakeholders are beginning to find a common front in your committee. At least, they are all making proposals and everyone would now be seen in his own perspective. In the first place, what are the real issues in the APGA crisis and what is the term of reference of your committee? Thank you very much, Maxwell. APGA is a family. Within a family, they have disputes. And I thank God that in view of the fact that we have disputes, the National Executive Committee of the party through the National Working Committee inaugurated our committee which comprises leaders of the party, almost all of our membership in the National Assembly and key stakeholders. One of the members of our committee was vice presidential candidate to our great leader, Odumegwu Ojukwu, and the membership cut across all the zones. To show you the commitment of our members, at our inauguration, only one member refused to work with us. Every other person who was nominated into the committee is now working, and they all affirmed commitment to the vision of APGA. So, I want to say that the focus is not on what divides us. The focus is not on what led to the issues, because it is in relation of the fact that there are issues that our committee was set up. So, our committee has a mandate, which you call the terms of reference, which is essentially to rebuild the party as the name of the committee clearly states, to ensure that the major organs of the party are reconstituted, like the Board of Trustees, to reconcile members of the party and to ensure that our party leadership do not spend 90 per cent of the their time in litigation as has been the trend in the last 12 years. So, our mandate is clear. It’s unfortunate that you still pick up the newspaper and read things that appear as if our party is in dispute. What it tells you about our party is that our party is organic. Anything that is organic means that there is life in it. Once there is life in something, there will be disputations and there will be contestants. And if you know, politics is all about contest. It is happening in all the parties down the line. So, intra-party contest is a contest for power which is what politics is all about. What we are against is when it becomes so divisive and when you start wondering at times what the person appears to be fighting for. Our committee in the short time we have worked had accomplished so many landmarks, and we thank God for it. What we plead with all our other members is to stop conducting themselves in a manner that might smirk of being mischievous by abusing the judicial process. The way I use the word ‘abusing the judicial process,’ is when you go to court and make applications that undermine the judiciary and make a joke of it. For instance, where you know a superior court like the Court of Appeal or Supreme Court has taken a position on something and then you go and compel a subordinate court like a State High Court to make a pronouncement that is in total conflict with what the superior court has said, you are making a mockery of the judiciary. And the judiciary is such a very great institution of our nation that nobody must be seen involved in drawing the institution back. So, we denigrate such conduct and we urge our members who are involved in it to desist. Our party has only one recognised and recognisable leader who is the chairman of the party and he is the one that has been recognised by the Court of Appeal, and until the Supreme Court says he is not our chairman, he remains our chairman because Court of Appeal has aaid he is our chairman. INEC which is the only body that is authorised to recognise the leadership of political parties has also written to say that they recognise Chief Victor Umeh as chairman of our party. And I want to commend all our leaders and the stakeholders who have seen us in the course of our town-hall meetings and in the course of our interactions with them, for encouraging us. I want to particularly recognise Governor Peter Obi who is a father figure in our party. Governor Peter Obi represents the symbol of our party that has placed good governance. I want to appreciate Governor Rochas Okorocha who is a performing governor, who has shown the difference between charlatanism and governance in real terms. The work he has done in Imo has shown that he can accomplish in two years what the charlatan that was there in four years could not even attain one-tenth of what Rochas has done till date. And this is the outstanding nature of the APGA brand. The APGA brand or the APGA platform is the one that works to please the people, because the people in every respect are the ones who institute the government. What the leadership owe everywhere you see APGA in power, is that they owe it to the people. That is why they are obliged to perform. They don’t owe it to any godfathers or to any system. They owe it to the people. So, we must commend the APGA leadership for performing. So, that is how our journey has been so far. We have traversed the country like you have seen. We have met all the key stakeholders, our governors, our speakers and the caucus of our party membership in the Houses of Assembly. We have had town hall meetings with our members across, with our ordinary members, and we have met with the National Assembly caucus of our party last Friday. So, God is with us and we are achieving success, because our aim is to build an APGA brand that represents APGA, that represents what APGA means, a party that wins elections for the people and serves the people, to please the people. That is what APGA means. *** As mediated by the press, APGA is in three factions. The mainstream faction led by Chief Victor Umeh, another faction led by Governor Peter Obi with Chief Maxi Okwu initially as caretaker chairman, interim chairman, now national chairman. A third faction led by Governor Rochas Okorocha, though he said he is in the mainstream. He is with Umeh. But in reality, he is pronouncing and propagating All Peoples Congress, and Chief Umeh has spoken severally to denounce it. These are different tendencies and it might be an uphill task for your committee to effectively reconcile them because it could be difficult to achieve compromise somewhere. Our committee is already achieving success. The fact is that this people whom you think are singing discordant tunes have had meetings with us. The day we were with Governor Obi, we spent more than four and half hours with him, and it was a brotherly meeting, where he ventilated all his – I don’t know if I should call it grievances – and he also restated his positions. I want to assure you that there are no three factions in APGA. APGA is one family. In any political party, there are some tendencies, even in the Labour Party, you talk of extreme left of Labour, extreme right of Labour; even in the Democratic Party, you say extreme left of Democratic Party and extreme right of Democratic Party. I agree there are tendencies in APGA. There are tendencies that believe that APGA should have a closer relationship with the PDP or with the Federal Government. There are tendencies that believe that APGA should align with the opposition conglomeration that is forming. And there is a position that is the purist position. These are the natural tendencies in any political family. Any political family has these tendencies – extreme right, extreme left, centrist. So, it just shows you the dynamism of the membership of APGA. These things were happening, but the mainstream remains the leadership, and that is why you can see us interacting. There is an on-going contest for leadership. So, as a result we expect that people will obey constitutional authority by subordinating their ambition for a later day since there is one recognised single leadership as embodied in the chairmanship of Chief Victor Umeh. So, that is an understated fact and it is an incontestable fact. Many people outside APGA have appraised the role of Chief Maxi Okwu in this whole crisis and have expressed surprise that someone who was Chairman of Citizens Popular Party within a fortnight said he was now APGA chairman and has been parading himself as such. At some point, he said he is stepping aside. Within a short time again, he is everywhere – Abuja, Aba, as APGA chairman. And he is a lawyer. Not just a lawyer a pro-democracy kind of activist. His own role needs a definition? First, my job as a conciliator is to reconcile all the tendencies and also ensure that our members who are erring are corrected. Clearly, my friend, my very good friend indeed, Chief Maxi Okwu is erring. Our challenge is to bring him back to the family. He was in the party long ago, long before we came on board. I returned about two years ago. I came in with the Rochas group into APGA. So, I followed Rochas into APGA. So, we are newcomers. But in his recent coming, he is a newer comer than us. My membership is about three years old now in APGA. He is just re-joined. And a political party is not a cult. It is a dynamic, organic association. So, the more the merrier. We can never say that somebody cannot join or somebody cannot re-join. We welcome him back to the party. We also pray as a senior lawyer, a very senior lawyer indeed that he should submit to what he knows is correct. What we know and what he knows is also legal, because what every decent law abiding citizen must do to show that he is complying with the dictates of the rule of law is to subject himself to that rule of law. So, I urge him to submit and subject himself to the rule of law. Rule of law is against brigandage. Rule of law is against conduct that appears not to recognise the institution of constituted authority as invested in the Constitution and in our courts, and in the institutions of the Constitution like the INEC. If you recognise these institutions, then you will conduct yourself in a manner that is harmonious with the dictates of the pronouncements of these institutions that order our lives. I expect him to realise that. There is a day for battle. There is a day for armistice and there is a day for peace. Today is the day for peace. It is part of our mandate to also communicate and contact him, and in future, you will be hearing of my meeting with my brother and friend, Chief Maxi Okwu. I will also tell him that no matter what is happening, he should remember that at the end of the day history will judge all of us. And as a senior person in the law practice and in the law profession, I hope he will want to be remembered in a place that is not the dustbin of history. In the document you showed to me earlier, where Owelle Rochas Okorocha said he is in APGA in spirit. APC has not been crystallised. It has not been consummated. In fact, it is not even registered as it is today. I don’t know what the debate is all about. Or should he not be perceptible to have a rethinking about it where the supposed constituent units of that proposed coalition are too reluctant to lose their identities. Is APC not about a Muhammadu Buhari presidency? To the best of my knowledge, I know that you cannot be a governor without being a member of a political party. So, Governor Rochas Okorocha remains a member of our party because you cannot be a member of a party that hasn’t been formed. And if you go to him today, if you see him, you will see him flying the APGA flag on his car, the APGA flag in his office. There’s APGA all around him and he is all about APGA. We told him in a meeting with him that what we have with him is a Catholic marriage. He is allowed to romance, even though the husband will not be happy with him doing that. But let him know that what we have with him is a Catholic marriage. And we communicated this fact to him. He is a Catholic and I am sure the message was well received by him, and he remains a member of our party and we are part of him. I am not in a position to comment on formations and conjectures, because anything that has not happened is still in the realm of contemplation and I don’t think that this interview is about speculations. I don’t want to speculate on formations that have not materialised. I am a man who is in the reality of today and now. And now, APGA is a strong party. APGA wants to be a stronger party. APGA is the strongest party in the East, and APGA wants to ensure that the potentials that are embodied in the party are realised in the elections that follow, so that the strength and passion with which our people hold our party will be translated in the political offices we bear through elections. When we tell you of Rochas, you’ve heard him say he is still APGA in spirit. APGA is more than just a political formation. It is a spiritual movement. That is why it provides platform for people who have been frustrated on other platforms. APGA is the party, it is the platform that enables you and enables people to choose their leader and those they want. It is only APGA that provides that platform. And that is why APGA is getting stronger by the day, in spite of what people think are divisions within the fold. You and I know that APGA is growing stronger and stronger. But that is the truth of the matter. There are also what I call minor conflicts in APGA, though they may not be as minor as they appear, like the issue of Nwobu-Alor in Anambra and the state exco there, Governor Obi announcing the state exco dissolved without the concurrence of the National Working Committee? That is what we are reconciling. Those are part of the people we will reconcile. In Imo, the Agbasos and their grievance? Any grievance anywhere, we are involved in it. We will ensure reconciliation. That means you are going to look at every bit of it? As time allows, because we are supposed to submit our report the National Executive Committee of our party which shall be having their meeting on June 29. So, whatever we can resolve before June 29 we shall resolve. You have discussed with Governor Peter Obi. If it is something that can be discussed in the public, what do you think are his actually grievances, because he is at the centre of the crisis more or less? I will not say that he is at the centre of the crisis. I will say that Governor Peter Obi is a father-figure in our party. And because of his pivotal role in the party, if he has grievances, we will address it. But we have appealed to him that like a father he should have a forgiven heart. In fact, one of our leaders who was the vice presidential candidate of Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu when they contested the presidential election reminded Governor Peter Obi in our discussion the fact that he is like dustbin who people dump things on. He should have a forgiven spirit. And we appealed to him to forgive us wherever we have erred. We have appealed to him, and I am using this medium to appeal to Governor Peter Obi to forgive us wherever we erred and wherever we offended him. What is your own committee’s vision of APGA in the immediate months that follow? A stronger APGA, an APGA that will dominate the elections in the fact that our candidates will be returned, so we are going to be very particular about the quality of the candidates we present. We are going to be very, very particular about that, so that we present candidates who the people are passionate about the party. So, if you mix it with the candidate they are passionate about, that is equal to victory. We are going to produce popular candidates on a popular platform. That can guarantee victory that can never be rigged out. That is our mission – a greater APGA, an APGA that will win 40 per cent of the seats in Lagos State, an APGA that will win 20 per cent of the seats in every state in Nigeria because APGA has that capacity. And that’s our mission. We shall achieve it by God’s grace. Chief Okwu has been making an issue of APGA reconciling with the first chairman, Chief Chekwas Okorie and make it seem as though some persons and not himself was responsible for his expulsion and the all politics of reconciling with Okorie. Does your committee also see it as necessary to go and reconcile with Chief Okorie? The objective of our party is to make peace with all men, and Chekwas Okorie as a founding chairman of our party is a man we want to be at peace with. But then, I suspect that as he is the chairman of a party registered, it appears he has moved on. But it is our objective to be at peace with him. But it is clear he has moved on, because he is the chairman of another existing party. It is obvious that the likes of Chief Celestine Omehia and some of those who contested governorship under APGA platform in the last elections, the likes of Frank Ogbuewu, Reagan Ufomba. But in the present scenario, we don’t seem to hear much from them. Are they trying to keep aloof or are they playing reconciliatory roles that background? Our objective is to have a meeting with all our leaders and stakeholders across the board. And all these names you have mentioned are members of our party who have contested election at a very high level in our party. And it is mission to ensure that they remain members of our party. Every political party needs all the people and the friends it can make, and a political party should ensure that he does not lose friends and people who are the stakeholders. So, we hope to work to ensure they all remain on board and they all maintain their sympathies and confidence in the party, and this is our objective. But you and I know that some of them might also have moved on. But those that have not moved on, we will bring back to the fold. And if they’ve moved on, we encourage them to come back. Chief Sir Victor Umeh is the authentic APGA National Chairman
Posted on: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 00:42:22 +0000
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