A fact that must be acknowledged is that APGA is in crisis, with the future uncertain particularly if the current crisis is allowed to fester. I can also see the voices and hands of the enemies of the party promoting the meltdown. Their goal is simple: Destroy APGA for power grab. Anambra is APGA’s last bastion of hope. If Anambra fails, then the party is over!
The enemies are leaving nothing to chance and will succeed if we continue to allow our hearts dictate the thinking of our brains. Now is the time to wear our thinking caps, borrow some brains assuming we are now bereft of common sense. This is no time for zero sum gain or scorch earth politics.
The temporal setback we face can be arrested by the leaders, elders and veterans of the party who can deploy all their tact and skills to save this roof from falling. Should they fail to save the situation, then they must take the blames, knowing they didn’t invest enough thought, time and treasure for unity. Otherwise, they can steer the party to emerge from its current challenges more resilient, stronger, better and victorious.
A couple of days ago, I stumbled and read through a very lengthy press interview granted by Chief Chekwas Okorie to Daily Post. Chekwas was the founder and pioneer National Chairman of APGA who had left the party and later became a cafeteria member. In the interview, he divulged a lot of things which ought to be held back as an elder in pursuit of peace and unity. I don’t think Chekwas in the said interview made the right and appropriate intervention assuming all he said is true. You do not come to settle a family dispute and end up becoming the problem.
You may win the war but don’t win the peace. So, winning the peace is far much greater than winning the war. I wish to urge Chief Chekwas to lower his mic. This is not the time for finger wagging and doing the blame game but a time to sit down with all the disputants and begin a conversation that ought to have commenced many months back. As progressives and democrats, we can speak out but deep in our minds, we must be circumspect, hence everything must be done to save the baby from the bath water.
If we have managed our affairs very well, we ought to have realised that APGA is a huge tent, one family and the political arm of the Igbo struggle for relevance in Nigeria. Whatever are our differences, we must always remember our history and why APGA was birthed in the first instance. In this wise, it is given that when we disagree, we must disagree like one family and settle our differences like a family, for what unites us are more than the things that divide us.
This is a time to show APGA unity. I call on the leader of the party to do the needful by assembling a cream of credible party leaders with the moral force to weld the cracks. Here, I mean men and women that can be counted on the fingers. People who can sit down and think through the current crisis and come out with a process of respectful engagement that will achieve realistic objective.
I am for political solution to the current political problem. I detest it when politicians resort to the court to resolve what is clearly a political problem. Politicians should be able to come to the roundtable, present their issues and reach an accord, concordance, consensus and compromise. That’s why politics is about conflicts and conflicts resolutions.
In these troubling and difficult times, continuity in leadership is important to achieve most of our domestic objectives still on the table. Anambra in particular needs a governor that will consolidate the gains so far made and work for the happiness of the people. Soludo stands out as one man with a clear head, clear vision and clear understanding to lead this charge. On the 20th of May 2024, I effectively ended my tour of duty as Transition Chairman, a journey that commenced on the 3rd of August 2022. Within the period, we made sacrifices to make Anambra better. In two years we accomplished what could not be delivered in eight years.
We delivered on our agenda despite the antics of solution deniers. Someone told me that he thought Oyeagu-Abagana was irredeemable but I proved him wrong. I also thought at a time that Okpoko in Onitsha was a hopeless situation but Soludo proved the bookmakers wrong. That’s the vision and power of one man.
We also faced opposition from some individuals in the community of clergymen, traditional institutions and the business communities. Some became angry solution deniers because the governor was providing life-changing skills for jobless youths that were before now ready-made thugs, kidnappers, prostitutes and sometimes paid for hire murderers.
The tax payer’s money was needed to fix the roads, provide clean potable waters, fix the hospitals, deliver on free antenatal care and grow millions out of poverty. As the governor kept pressing on his agenda to make the home land safe and prosperous, they kept fighting him, and I envisage them continuing in their fight as he persists in pushing forward his progressive agenda.
I was a witness to how Mr. Governor waves off pressures, and how some people kept on coming to him to tell him “how a bad politician he is”. “How his predecessors behaved to get re-elected”.
Sometimes these words get to me, and any opportunity I had to speak to him on some of the issues, as he has often repeated in many fora, he told me, “I applied for this job and the people hired me. I committed to serve them when I ran. And I’m going to deliver on my promises”.
Soludo wasn’t a cipher, he is a messenger. On every of his campaign runs from his first governorship attempt, has always stuck to a particular message: Anambra must be good. He is conscious that the old order need to be deconstructed, and that the deconstruction will be met with opposition which requires that he will say more ‘NO’ than ‘YES’.
To succeed, he needs to fight his way through. You cannot turn our chaotic state to Dubai and Taiwan without a fight. I am proud that the governor is holding on strong and being proactive with grace under pressure. Anambra is a state with great potential. We are a state with a culture that unites us. We don’t have to agree 100 per cent with Soludo’s style and policies to team up with him to make Anambra liveable and prosperous in the years ahead.
The Soludo that I have come to know is result oriented. He’s passionate about APGA. He cares about the masses and how his leadership impacts on them. He sings the Anambra anthem with delight and shows his allegiance to our common goals, hence he hired 5000 teachers and another set of 3000 coupled with his massive financial youth empowerment programme and infrastructural development. Our job for the 20 months that I served as transition chairman was to effectively take the solution agenda out to the people at the grassroots.
At this moment, the future of our party and political survival of the governor is conjoined and interwoven. We must set our divisions aside and support Soludo’s leadership continuity.
I acknowledge that the governor is not perfect and no one is. There are still some areas that require improvement. I am confident those gaps will be addressed in the course of time. I have said many nice things about Soludo in the past and this time, I won’t also be mum. I will not turn my back on him. I am all in for his re-election. I admire his courage and unwavering commitment to deliver on his agenda. My early endorsement of him is based on the following planks where he has done well: political stability, prudence in management of resources, environment, infrastructure and youth empowerment. I therefore call for unity and support his leadership continuity.
In Anambra we have an unwritten accord on zoning which the people have come to respect. The only way to sustain this accord is to allow Gov Soludo to complete the eight years of the South. Anything other than this will cost a disruption which will hurt both the party and the political stability of the state.