From Fred Itua, Abuja
Twenty four hours after the ruling of the Supreme Court reinstating him as national chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Edozie Njoku has appealed to all aggrieved members of the party, especially the sacked national chairman, Victor Oye, to join hands together with him to move the party forward.
He made the appeal yesterday night at a press conference in Abuja. He described APGA as a party desirous of making significant inroads into the nation’s political space in the 2023 general elections.
Displaying a copy of the said judgement, Njoku said he approached the Supreme Court to review its earlier position on the matter, adding that in its wisdom, the apex court ruled in his favour.
Njoku was sacked by the lower court and went on to lose at the appellate court. Not satisfied, he approached the Supreme Court to rule on the matter.
He said: “I was removed by the lower court in Jigawa state. We went on an appeal and we saw what happened at the appeal court. We went to the supreme Court, things happened, but the Supreme Court is full of wise men and women and we took our time, asked them to look at that thing again and yesterday (Monday), it was revised.
“Not revised but they just took the name; it is just a name that was inserted where it was supposed to have been and they now put things back in place. We are going to have another press conference but what I really want to do is to thank all Nigerians who have stood behind justice, who have stood behind truth, all those who have laboured under the side of truth. For the past four years, we have been crying.”
According to him, a meeting of key stakeholders of the party will hold soon to chart the way forward, saying “everyone who left our party, please come back. There is room for all of us. APGA is not an Igbo party, but a party the Igbos have strong sentiment for. We need to be truly guided and I also have to choose my words.
“And I beg the seven members of the National Working Committee to calm down. We have to reduce the rhetorics of insulting one another. Oye is a gentleman and I have high respect for him as a former national chairman of our party.
“He (Oye) will be one of those I will reach out to, and he is not an imposter. He was the national chairman of APGA from 2015 to 2019. We should respect him as the former national chairman of the party no matter his shortcomings which we can say are excessive but everyone has his own shortcomings.”
In his reaction however, Oye described the said judgement as “a fake and doctored document” and promised to make public the true state of affairs of the party.