CHIEF Ojukwu, as the national leader of APGA, desired and worked for the reign of internal party democracy and quarrelled with Okorie just over this as an issue.

Chief Umeh has succeeded in pursuing the dream, vision and programme of Ikemba for APGA by translating a paper strategy into living political reality in Igbo land, leading to greater party cohesion, stability and electoral achievements. With his sterling leadership and party mobilisation qualities, APGA is set to become the party to beat in Igbo land and the country in the coming 2015 elections in Nigeria.

INEC, APGA and post -­­­­Ojukwu’s challenges

Actually, my historical analysis of APGA’s fortunes arose over the last interview held by Chekwas Okorie in a national daily where he expressed his intention to register with INEC,  a new political party to be known as UPGA.

Chief Okorie is not making any hidden programme of his agenda to float a new political party so soon after his eventual defeat by democractic party forces, backed by Nigeria’s highest court of the land that stood for a broader vision of internal party democracy led principally by Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu(God bless his soul),the great Biafran Head of State and Chief Victor Umeh,the ebullient democract and Igbo leader who took up the gauntlet and led the leadership tussle against Okorie’s belittling agenda to pocket the fortunes of Igbos in Nigeria into his individual party control.

Soon enough after the Supreme Court ordered Chekwas to surrender the APGA certificate of registration under his illegal control to Chief Umeh,the authentic APGA Chairman, Okorie went on his way, including using  a  newspaper, to give reasons why he was floating a new political party.

It will not make any sense to advance all the points why this defeated man decided to form a new political party. It will not be good for people to talk  ill of or lie about  the dead, as Chekwas did recently, especially when the dead happens to be a man who has sacrificed his all for Igboland.

Hear him in  an interview: “I couldn’t find myself going into open confrontation with him(Ikemba);I couldn’t find myself floating another political party to be in rivalry with him over a political space in the same area because each party has to have its own base. So I kept exploring the reconciliatory option until he passed on’’.

Cheap saleout! Until the great Ikemba passed on, he was never in any compromising position with Okorie who called him names and carried vile propaganda against him and Umeh and other APGA faithfuls once Ojukwu showed him that APGA must enjoy internal and grassroots democracy for it to achieve the vision of liberating the Igbo man and women in Nigeria.

Until he died there was no meeting or reconciliation between Ojukwu and Okorie.  All the tissues of lies said in the said interview were, of course, cusped with the name he intended giving the new political party formed posthumously after the Igbo political party project.

He said that the party after his personal dreams and selfish vision would be called UPGA(wait a minute—did somebody cry blue murder?) Please don’t, because Okorie is an expert in manipulating figures,images and icons to score cheap political gains.

It was a wise breather for Ojukwu, even in death, and his Igbo followers in Nigeria and abroad, when in the Saturday Sun of March 24,2012,Chief Umeh,the National Chairman of APGA, alerted the nation on the underhand and selfish machinations of Okorie when he called upon INEC not to register UPGA, Okorie’s  new party which he wanted to use to feather his convulted political nests as a democractic autocrat.

In his own interview, Chief Umeh went on to explain why the new intended cloned party will go against the rule of law and best practices in  party registration due process: UPGA is an attempt to clone APGA-Ojukwu’s dream party

Umeh made the following expositions on Okorie’s double-dealing deception at individual and vindictive  party registration efforts latest efforts:

“We in All Progressives Grand Alliance have our reasons for not wanting Chekwas Okorie to register UPGA. One is that it is a rule that no political party should have similar acronym or name.

The name United People Grand Alliance is similar to All Progressives Grand Alliance. We are opposed to it more particularly as when we wanted to register APGA in 2002 the name we submitted to INEC for registration was United Progressives Grand Alliance, but INEC rejected the name. We had to adjust to all Progressives Grand Alliance, that is replacing ‘United’ with ‘All’ to be able to scale INEC’s hurdle. That name APGA and UPGA sound similar.

Moreover, UPGA has a historical perspective as an acronym. Our people and Nigerians can identify UPGA with the old party called UPGA (United Progressives Grand Alliance). Even today some people still pronounce APGA as UPGA. In the South East part of Nigeria, for instance, rural women and men only know UPGA; they don’t understand APGA. That was the old party they knew and supported in the past”.

Mr. CHUKWUNONYELUM ANUWEZE, a political analyst, wrote from Abuja.