Soludo May Be The Reason APGA Will Lose Anambra — Chekwas Okorie
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Chief Chekwas Okorie, the pioneer National Chairman and founder of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), in this interview speaks on the fast approaching Anambra State governorship election and the chances of Governor Charles Soludo, as well as other national issues. Excerpts
You said earlier that the November governorship election in Anambra State is a three-way fight between APGA, APC and Labour Party. Given the place of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as the former ruling party not only in the state but nationally, does it mean you don’t reckon with them?
As I speak to you, I don’t even know who is the candidate of PDP in the same November governorship election. I also don’t know how many people who know the candidate of the PDP in the election. So it’s not about the party, it’s about the current reality. PDP was a ruling party in Nigeria for 16 years but we are talking about today. Today in Anambra State, PDP is existing in name, to the best of my knowledge and I know very many prominent people in PDP who are my friends but none of them seems to be interested in the goings-on there, some of them don’t even know who their candidate is. Because of the crisis in PDP, they don’t know who is sponsoring who.
So even the PDP stalwarts in Anambra that I know are not involved in the campaign because they don’t know who they are campaigning for. So if I exclude PDP in my counting ahead of the election, it is for a good reason, not out of malice. And if you ask anybody in Anambra, they will tell you that if PDP is in the campaign for that office, they are also not aware.
I know you are not a PDP member but given your huge experience in managing a political party and in the Nigerian political space, what do you think is the problem with the once imposing PDP?
They ruled the country for 16 years which is what they should have built upon. Basically for me as a person who has also administered a political party for quite a while, I can tell you that the problem of PDP is indiscipline and lack of party control which again borders on a lack of internal democracy in the party. PDP forgot that if a party is in full control, the party is respected. In a political party system, the party is supreme. So no matter how highly placed you may think you are, or the size of your pocket, which you may think is enough for you to get away with certain things, the party is supposed to put every member where they should be. If you don’t want to belong to that same party, you have the liberty to leave. Joining a political party is voluntary, and exiting it is also voluntary. But this party (PDP) sat down, pandering more to the size of the pockets of their misbehaving members. And there were (and still are) clear cases of anti-party activities, which in those days, even during my time as party chairman, would never have been tolerated for 24 hours. But they went ahead and continued to turn the other face. The PDP was there when the former governor of Rivers State constituted a team of five governors, and they called themselves G5. And they were clearly opposed to the party’s aspiration for the presidency at the 2023 election. All of them worked against their party, but that of the former Rivers State governor was most outstanding.
He never pretended about his anti-party activities, and nothing happened. So from there, indiscipline became the order of the day in the PDP. When a party is in that situation, it begins a free fall. And the PDP has been on a free fall. If you look at the whole PDP, they are now going to beg people to come around; they are all over the place, sending their important personalities like Professor Jerry Gana, going on television and appealing to Peter Obi to please come and have their presidential ticket, and who would have thought this would happen? The PDP presidential ticket used to be a hot cake but here they are going about begging Peter Obi. Governor of Bauchi State is also among those begging Peter Obi to come and take their ticket. They are assuring him that if he takes the ticket, no person would defeat him, he would be on a sure way to becoming president. Obviously, they want to use him to shore up the image of the party.
So this is the extent the PDP has fallen. It’s all happening in the public domain. Everybody knows it and they themselves know it but it’s unfortunate that they have not started solving it. Some of them believe they are doing something to solve the problem but for as long as they cannot put their foot down on the ground and bring those recalcitrant members of their party to book as required in a party that has any modicum of discipline and control, then their problem will remain like that. And 2027 is fast approaching. Those who don’t want the party to survive are still in the party, hiding their anti-party activities, it’s such a shame.
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