National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), VICTOR UMEH, is currently engaging four of the party’s House of Representatives members who defected to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in verbal warfare. Speaking to Assistant Editor (North), CHUKS EHIRIM, in Abuja, Umeh accuses the defectors of running away from being assessed by the party members before 2015. He also sheds light on his senatorial ambition among other issues.
How do you see the recent defection of some members of your party in the House of Representatives, including Uche Ekwunife, to PDP?
Victor Umeh
This was a lady who went to the House of Representatives through the PDP. In 2007, she joined PPA to run for governor while in the House of Representatives. She lost. She came over to APGA in 2010 after losing the election. We accepted her, supported her, gave her ticket to go to the House of Representatives. She went.
Last year, while still in the House of Representatives, she ran for governor and lost at the party primaries. At the middle of the election, after the first ballot on November 16, when APGA had won 20 out of 21 local government areas in Anambra State, she filed an action at the Federal High Court, six days after, asking the court to disqualify the APGA candidate, Willie Obiano, for double registration and declare her the authentic candidate.
Of course, that snowballed into a lot of other court cases from people who followed her case against the party. At the end, all these things were dismissed by the court. On account of such behaviour, after the governorship candidate of APGA went ahead to win the election, finished very strongly, got sworn in, do you think Ekwunife will be his best friend and that of the party? You would expect that she had shot herself in the foot, and because of the fear of the future, she decided to take a walk on the party, because she has squandered her goodwill among party members and everybody.
She was choked by her own actions and wanted to give the impression that the party is not a responsible one and moved on. She is now running for Senate. She is still in the House of Representatives. She wants to run for Senate in the PDP. Election contest is not the preserve of any individual. We have other members of the party who will want to contest election.
She has been in the House for two terms and she is going for third term. That is what she is seeking. Because there is no automatic ticket that will be given to her, she took a walk and started disparaging the party.
What about the other defecting members? Do they have the same problem?
It is the same issue of ticket. When you are not standing properly before the people who will assess you, the best thing to do is to run away. They are running away from their exams. Examination is coming; party will conduct primaries. APGA has not started any process of nominating its candidates for the 2015 general elections and people, out of anxiety, are running away.
We have not produced the guidelines. Who is telling them that the party will not choose them? They have scored themselves low in the eyes of APGA members who will choose these candidates. They are running away. If they have done well for the people who will nominate them, they will not be scared of any challenge.
People go through primaries in their parties before they take decisions on what to do next. So if you are sure you are going to win the primary and you are taking a walk, will it amount to dumping the party? Let us wait to see where they have gone to; whether they will get automatic ticket from the PDP. So the issue is ticket. I was abroad when this happened and the national publicity secretary of APGA said they are election ticket hunters. That is exactly what they are.
Some have described them as prodigal children. Do you subscribe to that?
Adamu Mu’azu (PDP National Chairman) called them prodigal children. I read him online. He welcomed prodigal children back. So we are not miffed by what they have done. They have exercised their rights to move away, though unlawfully and unconstitutionally. As people elected through the platform of APGA, the law does not allow them in the House of Representatives to move to another party.
It was alleged that some of these people were originally PDP members, but your party adopted them as compensation for working against the party in Anambra in 2010. How would you react to this?
That is not correct. The three people who defected with Ekwunife were virgin politicians when we gave them our tickets. Victor Afam Ogene was never a politician. He was Editor of The Source magazine. Because of his contribution to journalism, we felt that he would be a critical mind to make good contributions at the National Assembly. We gave him the ticket without any effort on his part. Nobody asked him for anything. He was there.
The other one, Uche Azubuogu, was not known by anybody. That was his first time out. The other one, (Cyril) Egwuatu, was not in politics. He was even a very sad case. Because of our decision to create a balance for an Onitsha indigene to go to the House of Representatives, we accommodated him and put him forward. Now look at what he has done. It is for him to go back there and win again because when some of these things are done, they think that they can easily get out of them. So, there was nobody who was in PDP.
Was Ekwunife a PDP governorship aspirant in 2010?
In 2010, she was candidate of the Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA).
When she left the PDP?
When she left PDP, as a member of the House, she didn’t run for governorship in the PDP. It was from the PDP that she went to the PPA to run for governorship. So somebody who has this kind of profile of running from one party to another to look for ticket to run for election will very soon become boring to those who are watching.
There was a proverb I gave when I was confronted with this same question. I challenged them to tell the Nigerian public how much they have contributed to the development of APGA in the three years they have been in the House of Representatives, in terms of financial support for the party. Nothing! So you ride on the back of the party to win an election and you don’t think about the party. And you come back for the ticket when the time comes, as if it is your birthright.
I have read some of the submissions they made, that they were not patronised with appointments in the state. That was not what they were elected to do at the National Assembly. If you are elected, you should go and do your work at the National Assembly. Because you are a member of the party and a lawmaker at the National Assembly does not entitle you to request for nominations for appointment to commissionership, board membership and all that because you have your own paraphernalia of office.
As Chairman of the Committee on Environment in the House of Representatives, Ekwunife has been empowered to use her office to help party members. So when they go there to work for themselves and want the governor to settle their supporters, they are passing the buck. Somebody should be alive to his or her responsibilities. We know that contracts are awarded in the places where they are serving. Who have they been giving these contracts to? Go and ask party members how many people they helped to get one contract.
One of them alleged that about 90 per cent of the appointments made by the governor was from his own senatorial zone. Are you aware of that?
Who is the person? I don’t want to work on speculations.
One of those who defected from the House; I read it.
I also read that report. It was not credited to anybody. If you want to say something, you should be bold to say: I, Honourable so so, put it to you that this is what the governor has done. That story was a dummy; it was not credited to anybody who defected. It was disguised. The allegation was disguised and presented. The governor of Anambra is working for the people of the state.
How many of them have held constituency briefings? They have constituency projects, through which they draw funds from the National Assembly through appropriation. Can they render account on those they have done? It is always good to go and look at somebody’s eye and say there are some pecks, but when your own eyes are blurred, you cannot see anymore. So it is a question of somebody who is scampering for something to put to the public, to justify an ignoble action of walking out on the party that gave him an opportunity to be where he is, without any reciprocal support to the party.
The allegation is not supposed to come from them. If there are people in the state who feel that certain things have not been done properly, they should speak. We didn’t elect them to the National Assembly to come and criticise the governor’s appointments. They should concern themselves with their National Assembly duties and must do what they were sent there to do – represent their constituencies, attract benefits to the people and give account for those benefits they have attracted to the people, not leaving that to go and attack a governor who was elected to govern the state. It is a digression just to whip up sentiment to justify their prodigality.
How is your senatorial ambition going?
Well, here I am. I am not afraid of any opponent for the fact that people will vote. We are going to use the votes of the people to decide who becomes anything in the election. The Independent National Electoral Election (INEC) has demonstrated the ability to conduct election. Every election that comes, INEC keeps on improving on the performance in the previous election. The Osun, Ekiti and Anambra governorship elections are clear indications that people who hope to rig election are living in the past.
Buoyed by the confidence that the votes would be used to decide who goes to the Senate in my senatorial zone, I tell you that my basket of votes will be too heavy to carry. And after winning, I will donate some votes to those who will lose (laughter). This is because this is my territory and I have been working for my people, for the good of my state. I have led a very tenacious struggle to stabilise Anambra through APGA. My people have been exceedingly happy with my modest contributions.
Their call for me to go to the Senate is not sponsored by me. All the strata of the society in my place are asking me to go on, to go and represent them at the Senate, after the abysmal performance of Dr. Chris Ngige, who people thought was going to be a very serious lawmaker at the National Assembly, going by his disposition. Instead of doing that, he went to the National Assembly and became dumb. He has not been speaking, we have not been reading him; we have not been hearing him. And he has not been coming to the state to give account of his stewardship.
The constituency projects for which they have been collecting several billions of naira to do, he cannot point at anything he has done. During the last governorship election that he participated in, he was asked what he had done, and he said he built V.I.P. toilets. So everybody is suffering from diarrhoea in Anambra Central Senatorial zone. So he is building V .I .P. toilets, so that you can go on emergency toilet to ease yourself.
Is that the essence of sending somebody to the National Assembly? That was his answer at the gubernatorial debate. He made people to look at him as somebody who has completely lost direction.
Moreover, APGA is the party of Anambra people. This is a place the party has refused to go away. We have been there, eight years governorship, going to the third term of governorship in the state – 12 years. We have consolidated. The structure we have there is a structure that nobody can take. We have the local government chairmen and councillors, all members of APGA, working. We have the state government there, run by APGA. What are you coming to tell the people of Anambra; to reject a credible APGA candidate, particularly somebody like me who has led the struggle for them to reach this far? I don’t think. So I am not afraid.
