By Kanayo Esinulo
For sure, the success story which neighboring Anambra State rapidly became under the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, with Peter Obi’s administration as the Chief Servant, the people of Imo State started associating what was happening across its borders with the discipline and quality leadership that APGA easily provided. Before his death, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu the symbol of the party, instilled undiluted discipline, accountability and transparency into the party he was to leave behind. APGA became very attractive to Ndigbo particularly Ndi-Anambra and Ndi-Imo. Anambra State was the first to fall for the APGA aroma, and a once dangerous-to-visit Anambra state became so visibly peaceful, prosperous and immensely attractive to local, international and diaspora investments. Politicians in Imo may have, I suspect, been overwhelmed by the successes in Anambra under a government led by APGA.
In the eyes of any politically conscious igbo, APGA bu nke anyi – this particular one is our own. That was the pay-off that Ojukwu awarded to the party at a huge rally in Onitsha, a year or so before he passed on. Till date, it is generally held in Abia State that Alex Otti of APGA won the governorship election in that state in 2015. In Imo, the weak leadership of the party was willing and prepared to market the APGA brand to the highest bidder and Rochas Ethelbert Okorocha was waiting and ready. A small deal and some sweetened talk with Okorocha, Martin Agbaso surrendered the APGA party in the state to him and, in the keenly contested and controversial governorship election of that year, 2011, Okorocha was declared the winner. Few years later, he abandoned the party for the All Progressives Congress, APC. APGA in Imo state became an abandoned orphan.
With the dumping of APGA by its own sitting governor, Okorocha, the party in Imo State lost weight and almost became a joke until a recent combined effort of experienced and dedicated political tacticians with huge experience and exposure, Ikedi Ohakim, Uche Onyeaguocha, Okey Ezeh and others to revive an already prostrate APGA in the state. The fact that there were more than a dozen Governorship aspirants angling for APGA gubernatorial ticket, some of them are definitely solid political actors, both at state and federal levels, proves, if any proof was still needed, that the party had sufficiently recovered from the abandonment and trauma that it suffered when Okorocha suddenly left it in the cold. The primaries for governorship, senatorial, House of Representatives, State Assembly election in 2019, were slated for early October but party delegates who converged at Aladinma Mall for the exercise merely wasted their time and money. Each APGA delegate for governorship primary, for instance, paid the sum of ten thousand Naira, and in the words of a thoroughly disappointed aspirant: “for reasons best known to APGA leaders, they decided to collect ten thousand naira and four thousand five hundred naira from 5,795 members of the party just to stand for delegates election”. It was a huge rip-off and even the bigger parties never extorted and exploited its delegates in such almost criminal manner.
In a story I wrote some weeks ago where I tried to review the possibility of APGA taking Imo State in 2019, I slightly insinuated that the number of governorship aspirants in Imo APGA was too windy, although I acknowledged that the more they are, the merrier, and I went ahead to suggest that if the party was to win Imo State and save our trapped people from the hands of Rochas Okorocha and his crowd, the idea of choosing a consensus candidate for the governorship election in 2019 should be considered a viable option, tabled, honestly discussed and agreed on. I suggested an Ikedi Ohakim/Okey Ezeh ticket or any other winning combination that could halt Okorocha’s camouflaged third-term bid through a proxy. In making the honest suggestion, I had the famous Imo Equity Formula in mind. But it became clear that the political virus that struck the party in 2011, when Okorocha breezed into Imo APGA, seized it, overwhelmed its leadership at both state and national levels, and successfully paid his way to become its candidate had started rearing its ugly head once again.
The sudden migration of Ifeanyi Ararume, until few weeks ago, an APC chieftain in the state, signaled a political complication that the party is now suffering from in Imo State. The alleged accommodation of the Ararume persona and his known money-speaks-for-me style of politics by both state and national leadership of APGA meant that even if there were no primaries, as indeed happened, the highest bidder would be announced as the winner and the party ticket handed to him on a platter. And that was exactly what happened. AS I write this, the party that many thought would rescue the people of Imo State from Okorocha has failed to understand the importance of party unity at this time, and the need for transparency in the choice of the party’s flag bearers at all levels. The national and state leadership of the party blew an historic opportunity to guide the party to victory in Imo State.
The case of Governor Willie Obiano, the only serving and sitting APGA Governor in Nigeria, is more worrisome, even tragic. He failed woefully to provide leadership when it was needed most. For instance, he failed woefully to protect Mrs Bianca Ojukwu from locusts and money bags when the widow of our political struggle for liberation needed to be protected from the ravages of rascality, Willie Obiano looked the other way – the National Leader of the party and Chairman of its Board of Trustees. The consequence is that Willie Obiano could not also rescue a neighbouring Imo State from a rampaging new comer whose known mission is to internally disorganize APGA in Imo and pave way for it to fail. It was a classic case of the tragedy of leadership. Obviously, trapped since May 2011 by the Okorocha contrivances, Imo state has been in serious need of rescue but the party they had heaped their entire hopes on, APGA, nea bu nke anyi (this one is our own) seem to have left them in a lurch. In Owerri, the belief is rife that that an Aguleri Mafia led by Obiano was part of the conspiracy for APGA to fail in Imo State. I fail to understand, sometimes, why someone like Willie Obiano would refuse to be part of an unfolding history, but instead prefer the cosmetics and the inanities that opportunism offers and parades.
Let it be known that there were no primaries in APGA in Imo State, at all levels. It is painful but true. If this is the best that Willie Obiano and Victor Oye can organize and supervise in the name of party primaries in my state, then APGA, as a political party, is in serious need of surgery, if it must survive. . Its days as a political party of hope and an institution left behind by the hero of our political struggles in Nigeria seen numbered. It can be painful.
Esinulo is a Journalist.
