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By Braide Damiete
For weeks, Dr. Alex Obiogbolu, criss-crossed the nooks and crannies of Anambra State, as director general of Valentine Ozigbo governorship campaign organisation in the November 6 Anambra election. But shortly after the polls which the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lost to the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), he resigned from the PDP citing indiscipline and disloyalty bordering on treachery.
The former state PDP publicity secretary and four-time governorship aspirant, said he worked for 21 years to build the party in the state, but lamented that few persons who constituted part of the leadership that should show direction maintained a stranglehold on the life of the party.
Obiogbolu, who has since been confirmed as a member of the 80-man transition committee said Anambra people are lucky for electing Professor Charles Soludo. According to him, the former CBN governor would consolidate on the achievement of successive administrations.
You were once the poster boy of the PDP in Anambra and the director general of the Valentine Ozigbo governorship campaign. Why did you defect to APGA barely a month after election?
True, I was once the face of PDP in Anambra. But you must realise that I wasn’t the candidate of the party for the governorship. I was only the DG and worked as a team. The problems of the party which has always cost us victory in the past repeated itself this time around. People threw ideology out of the window.
Can you be more specific?
PDP has continued to show in Anambra State incapacity to function as a united body to win elections. From experience, to be able to win the support of voters, you must show unity, purposeful aim which is your manifesto. You must show commitment to drive that goal through. Commitment was lacking in the PDP. That is why when you develop party agents, on the day of the election, they are nowhere to be found as they are not committed to the party. Oftentimes, it is not as a result of theirs. They had elected in the past people who often abandoned them the moment they entered political office. All the three parties during the last election had internal crises. APC had. The aspirants went to court against the candidate. PDP had. The aspirants went to court against the candidate. APGA had two people laying claim to the governorship ticket. One thing that helped in that election which the judiciary contributed tremendously to was that all the cases minus one were dealt with before the election.
The moment APGA had their judgment, they all coalesced into one formidable bloc. They didn’t coalesce 100 per cent but they coalesced. When PDP had their own, they further divided. So, who then had the chance to win? I was the DG and if people still don’t believe that the party should be united, there is nothing I can do.
So, why didn’t you leave the party at that point? Why did you wait until after the poll before defecting?
Even in a football match, the fact that you were given a red card does not mean you give up hope of winning the match. You still fight on in the belief and conviction that you would win the match. We had that conviction that we would win. But the people spoke. Can we move against what the people say? No.
Not many people would buy into your argument because your action is nothing short of political prostitution?
Would you call that political prostitution? A woman stays with a man for 21 years and decided that it was time to move on, and you say it’s political prostitution? We tried to make the party work. When we came together to form the PDP, we did it with one resolve under the late Alex Ekwueme with the aim that it would bring the South East into the mainstream at the national level. When you look at the last 23 years, this has not brought gains to our zone and to a lot of people and especially to Anambra State. We have been at the losing end. I felt it was time to make a change before one gets completely tired so that one can expend the remaining energy on another project.
One of the things you have to look at is that PDP as a party used the logo, the umbrella, to show that we can all come together under one platform for the advancement of our people. It was the only national party that subscribed to zoning and that was done. It was enshrined in the party constitution. It was initially to the South West and then went up North West and after that, it came down to South South. And in the last dispensation, we voted for the North again, Atiku from North East. Naturally, one would have expected that this time around, it would go to the South but you can see the same party talking from both sides of the mouth, saying there is nothing like zoning. Again, the party lacked purposeful leadership. A lot of indiscipline goes on without any consequential action. When you come down to Anambra State, a lot of anti-party activities, what you find are contravention of the laws guiding the party.
Why APGA, why not any other party?
When I resigned my membership of PDP, I did say I would be consulting and that in due course, I would let the public know my next direction. When you look at the yearnings of our people, the people of the South East believe that they have not been integrated fully into the Nigerian system. They feel their political aspirations have not been realised and they believe this is the best opportunity. Again, the South East isn’t asking that the presidency should be given on a platter. But again, even within ourselves, we haven’t shown true leadership. We haven’t come together with the purposeful aim of getting this power. When you look at the platforms today in APC or PDP, of course, I was convinced that the PDP was not desirous of giving it to the South East. The APC may because you can see that people of the South East are giving that friendly disposition that they can aspire to the presidency. One thing that is clear, the third national party, APGA, is focused on the Igbo aspiration. So after leaving the PDP, I reviewed it, I said the best form of strategy at this moment was to go back to see how we can all build APGA, make it a regional force. Once that is achieved, we’d be able to negotiate with other allied parties in the future to achieve our aspirations. That was why I chose APGA at the end of the day. Beyond that, I was also invited by the incoming APGA administration to come in and support the Transitional Committee to draw a roadmap for him.
Do you think Igbo presidency is realisable in 2023?
Yes and No. Yes, because it is the right thing to do. Not just Igbo presidency but presidency zoned to the South East. It’s realisable in the context that if the national parties were to respect the feelings of every Nigerian and accommodate every Nigerian, then, it would be. I would tell you why I said yes. In Sokoto State by elections, they have had to zone their governorship. If you go to Taraba State in the North East, they zone their governorship. Same with other states of the federation…all have had to zone their governorship and every other elective positions. So, why can you not zone your presidency even under elective processes? To that extent, I would say yes, if the leaders of the country were to sit together and understand the need for inclusiveness to bring about development and growth to the nation, then, I would tell you chances are that the South East presidential ambition would become a reality.
But no because when you look at the party platforms today, apart from APC which is even engrossed in its internal crisis, no other party has its door open for the South East. If we work hard in APGA, perhaps, it may be realisable in the near future.
I hope that the governor-elect can consolidate on the little Obiano has done so far or even do better than him? I ask because there are quite a number of instances where successive administrations either get stagnated or even reduce the level of performance.
Anambra is one of the states that has had it so good especially in the last 20 years. If you look at it from the time of Chris Ngige to Peter Obi to Obiano and now the incoming government, we have been able to get it right in terms of leadership. Leadership is not just about the governor but the team that works with him. That is why today, we have two cities which are major developing cities in the country today, Onitsha and Nnewi. If you look at the state’s GDP, it has also grown, the road network has grown, we have gotten infrastructure coming on from everywhere, the airport, conference centre, the investment arm of the state has attracted a lot of investments to the state. For us, it’s like more icing on the cake having someone like Soludo. Even when we were in the PDP, we knew he was a formidable candidate to deal with, that he came in with a lot of potentials, expertise and capacity to perform. That’s why today, a lot of people are looking up to him to make the next quantum leap into development.
In Anambra, Soludo has two things going for him, the state has a minimum standard and quality of leadership it presents. What he has shown pre-inauguration, not just campaigns, pre and post campaigns and now pre-inauguration, the way he started, drawing people from diverse backgrounds, people who are not even indigenes of Anambra State but who have had dealings with Ndi-Anambra to come together and develop a matrix for his development plan he had in his manifestos… This has not been done before. In the past, the job of a transition committee was only to collect hand-over notes, put them together and hand it over to the governor, but this time, it’s different. What the Soludo TC is doing is drawing up ideas and plans, looking at the shortcomings and failures of the past administration and building them into this matrix of development. I believe he has started very well, because not to plan is to plan to fail.
