When Peter Obi, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) vice presidential candidate, defected from the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) to the PDP on October 7, 2014, after serving eight years as governor of Anambra State, many accused him of betrayal.
I was one of them.
Bianca, widow of Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, was also in the nay-sayers column.
While alive, Ojukwu was the de facto leader and moral compass of the party. In death, he remains the spiritual arbiter and alter-ego. Understandably, Bianca was pained and scandalised.
In an interview with the Daily Sun, she forcefully called Obi out, describing his defection as a “betrayal and unimaginable breach of trust.”
“Close as I was to him, he did not even have the simple courtesy to inform me of this decision,” she moaned.
“What he has done is akin to desecrating his father’s grave. It is alu (taboo) in Igbo culture. I am deeply pained by this development.” Very strong words.
Many had expected Obi to fly off the handle, ranting and raving. He didn’t. He was, characteristically, rather measured, even charitable in his response.
But he forcefully pushed back on the charges of betrayal and disloyalty, insisting that he was the victim, not villain.
“I wish to reiterate that I am still loyal to our great leader (Ojukwu), in terms of what serves the interests of our people and the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” Obi said.
“Everyone knows today that APGA is not what it used to be. My assurance to our great leader did not imply that I would be loyal to a platform that some people have resolved to turn into an empty shell without an inner core of shared values.
“I remain faithful to those values and principles our great leader asked me to stand by and defend.”
Obi’s explanation didn’t convince me and I said that much in my article, “The tragedy of Peter Obi’s defection,” which I was told offended him.
But I reasoned then that the defection was a slippery slope that endangered the values of altruism and selflessness, pillars that propped his political career.
I insisted that his defection was sad “because we are talking about a man who held out so much promise for the Igbo that he was nicknamed Okwute Ndigbo (Igbo rock) and his political battles became collective Igbo battle.”
“Obi, in government, became a role model. He demystified governance by his sheer humility and simplicity. He elevated accountability to a level hitherto unknown in this country and fiscal responsibility became his middle name.
“Above all, he proved that no matter how lean the resources of a state, a governor who is public-spirited can deliver on his electoral promises. He left government with his head high,” I further wrote.
But four years after, I have a confession to make. Obi was right. Those of us who saw in his unflattering characterization of the APGA leadership a jejune excuse to leave, the quintessential dog and bad name metaphor, were wrong.
To claim otherwise in the face of what APGA has become since Anambra State governor, Chief Willy Obiano, became the party’s de facto leader and Mr. Victor Oye was elected the National Chairman, is to live a lie.
A political party that once held out so much hope not only for the Southeast but the entire country has been reduced to an empty shell without an inner core of shared values. The only thing matters to its unprincipled and greedy leaders is how much money one brings to the table. Even Judas Iscariot will be green with envy wherever he is when he thinks about the characters that superintend over the affairs of APGA.
After experiencing firsthand their shenanigans in the just concluded primary elections, Bianca, Nigeria’s former Ambassador to Spain, who contested the Anambra South Senatorial District primaries, described the exercise in Anambra and Imo states as a sham.
“The recent primary elections conducted by political parties across the nation were nothing short of a monumental embarrassment for our beloved party, APGA, for its failure to organise and superintend over a credible process,” she lamented in a statement she personally signed, adding that “this is without doubt APGA’s darkest hour.”
“At no other time in the 16 years that I have been a member of this great political movement, have we in the course of routine primary exercises witnessed such despicable levels of violence, vote rigging, and the wholesale importation of terror by political desperadoes intent on hijacking the electoral process at all costs.
“I experienced through each stage of the process the living hell that the ordinary members of this party go through in a quest to fulfil their political aspirations. This process turned out to be, for most of us, nothing other than a series of transactional arrangements with the prize going to the highest bidder. At every stage there was a concerted subversion of the democratic process with the active connivance of party officials. In many instances, most especially in Imo and Anambra states, no primaries actually took place, but candidates were simply handpicked and issued certificates of return.”
Bianca lamented that if nothing was done to retrieve the party from the greasy claws of mercenaries, it may well be the beginning of the end for APGA.
But the atrocity the APGA leadership committed in Anambra pales into insignificance when compared to the bazaar in Imo that ended in the fleecing of the people of their hard earned money in the name of a primary election that never was.
One of the aspirants described what happened as an unmitigated OBT (obtaining by trick).
Party officials, who purportedly came to conduct the primaries took over two floors of the Rockview Hotel, Owerri, and aspirants were busy moving from one room to the other paying ransom running into billions of naira. Each of the “political mugus” was, in the manner of advanced fee fraud, told he was the preferred candidate, annointed by the political gods in Awka after the expropriation.
Yet, there was no primary election at the end of the day. Instead, Senator Ifeanyi Araraume, a man who had no affinity whatsoever with APGA, who only joined the party barely three weeks before the primaries after he was schemed out of the All Progressives Congress (APC) by Governor Rochas Okorocha and his son-in-law, Uche Nwosu, was handed the ticket on a platter of filthy lucre.
Yet, here was a party that not only had the momentum but paraded a motley crowd of governorship aspirants, each with proven track records of achievements in the private and public sectors.
Imo and Abia states were low hanging fruits for APGA in the 2019 elections. But today, the party is not even sure of winning elections in Anambra State, a classical case of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
On Thursday, October 11, former governor Ikedi Ohakim, led 13 other aspirants that included Senator Bright Nwanne, Frank Nneji, Dr. Sam Amadi, Uche Onyeagocha, Humphrey Anumudu, Ike Ibe, Charles Onyeagbako, Chike Nsofor, Obi Njoku, Philip Ibekwe, Ziggy Azike, Nick Opara-Ndudu, Stanley Amuchie, and Okey Eze, to form what they called the “New-APGA.”
“All of us invested our experience, spirit, and hope in APGA. We fought for it, we rebuilt the brand. We spent our fortune to make APGA the party in Igboland in 2019. We believed that the way forward for APGA would have been transparent and credible primaries.
“Today, Governor Obiano, Oye and a few others, sat together and decided to spite the entire members of the party and bargain away the life of APGA. APGA leadership has committed theft and betrayal of historic proportion,” they lamented in a communique.
My advice is that they must not stop there. They must sue Victor Oye and any other person involved in the brazen Imo rip-off to recover their money. They paid for a chance to participate in the primaries. If no primary election held in Imo, APGA leadership must return the money they expropriated from the aspirants.
Meanwhile, APGA has been dealt a fatal blow. The greed of a few has trumped the fortunes of a once promising idea. Peter Obi was right after all. History will be unkind to whoever played a role in this perfidy.