As the country gears up for the upcoming off-cycle gubernatorial election in Edo and Ondo states, the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) has made known is preparedness for the exercise. While addressing the media in Abuja, the national chairman of APGA, Chief Edozie Njoku said his party was ready to take over the two states in elections slated for September and November 2024, respectively. Chief Njoku also announced that the primary election processes of the party, which will throw up formidable candidates that will guarantee victory, will commence on already scheduled dates, in compliance with the Electoral Act.
Speaking further, Chief Njoku pledged a level playing ground for all aspirants when he said: “I want to assure all the governorship aspirants from Edo and Ondo states that have been calling to express their willingness to contest on our party’s platform that they should be rest assured that free, fair and transparent primaries, which have remained elusive to others, will be made the cardinal virtue and practice in APGA.”
From the statement of the party chairman, it appears that APGA is ready to slug it out with the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the top jobs of Edo and Ondo states later this year. But there is a problem and a hurdle standing between Chief Njoku and the elections in the two states.
The problem is Mahmood Yakubu, the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the hurdle is the refusal of INEC to recognize Chief Njoku as the authentic chairman of APGA. While expressing his reservations about the refusal of Yakubu and his INEC to obey the Supreme Court judgement, which declared him the chairman of APGA, Chief Njoku has appealed to President Ahmed Bola Tinubu for his intervention to resolve this problem and remove the hurdle before him and the Edo and Ondo gubernatorial elections: “I am calling on President Bola Tinubu and the Attorney General of the Federation to look into this issue, especially where an agency of the government is deliberately disobeying and flouting the direct order of courts,” said Chief Njoku.
APGA, a political party that was founded in the early years of the 4th Republic as an all-purpose vehicle to advance the political interest of Nigeria’s predominantly Igbo people of the South East, has been embroiled in leadership tussle for most of parts of its existence. This protracted leadership tussle has reduced the once promising political party to a struggling entity that is confined to just one state of Anambra, while its contemporaries have blossomed and forged alliances that have landed them in power at the centre with control of about 20 out of 36 states. The current leadership crisis rocking APGA emanated from parallel conventions that were held in Awka and Owerri in 2019, which produced Chief Victor Oye and Chief Edozie Njoku, respectively. In the ensuing legal combat for authentication, which ended at the Supreme Court arena, Chief Njoku’s chairmanship of APGA was affirmed but the elected political leadership of APGA in Anambra State stuck to the Victor Oye faction, resulting in a protracted conflict between law and politics.
This situation has sharply polarised APGA, with many of its stakeholders pitching their tent with either if the divides. And in taking a firm stand with Chief Njoku, the founding chairman of APGA, Chief Chekwas Okorie, has called on Yakubu, the chairman of INEC, to resign due to his refusal to obey the Supreme Court judgement in favour of the chairman of APGA. While it is important for Yakubu and his INEC to obey court orders under all circumstances in order to preserve the sanctity of the efficacy of the judiciary, it has become imperative for all APGA stakeholders to close ranks and unite behind the rule of law and constitutionality, if the party must survive till 2027 when the next general election will take place.
To this end, Chukwuma Soludo, the lone APGA governor of Anambra State and leader of the party, will do well to reconsider his stand on this matter and rally members to resolve the current impasse. This move will be in the interest of his second term election in 2025. To avoid the Zamfara affair of 2019, Governor Soludo cannot continue to ignore a party in the leadership dispute with valid Supreme Court judgements in its favour. In the event that a dispute over the rightful party structure with respect to qualification of candidates is brought before it in a 2025 pre-election matter, the Supreme Court will be too willing to teach an unforgettable lesson on how not to disobey its judgements. Many words are not enough for the foolish.