By Chidiebere Onyemaizu
Will Professor Chukwuma Charles Soludo end up the last Governor of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA? Will APGA die in his hands and will Anambra slip away from the party’s grip after an unbroken 18 years of dominance?
The above nagging posers were probably the least in the mind of the youthful APGA National Chairman, Sly Ezeokenwa recently in Awka, the Anambra State capital, as he enthusiastically addressed a press conference to mark his one-year in office and reeled out his vision for APGA and strategies and innovations that aim at repositioning and strengthening the party. Ezeokenwa also poured encomiums on Governor Soludo for steering Anambra’s ship right since coming into office in March 2021.
However, as he did that Ezeokenwa was perhaps oblivious to the tremendous pressure on Professor Soludo to either, as APGA’s National Leader and its only governor, cause the party to announce a merger with the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC or outrightly defect to the ruling party. Multiple APGA and APC sources confirmed to Daily Sun that the national leadership of the APC wants Anambra by all means but given its utter unpopularity in the state, it recognises that none of the party’s bigwigs currently eyeing the ticket of the party for the 2025 gubernatorial election can defeat Professor Soludo and dislodge APGA in a free and fair contest devoid of federal might.
According to an APC chieftain in the state, “It is clear even to the blind that our people are not and have never been emotionally connected to the APC, so the only way we could grab power is through the backdoor and that is, getting the incumbent- Soludo to run on the platform of our party and that is what we are working towards”
Daily Sun learnt that one of the tempting Carrots the APC is dangling before Soludo, apart from effortless re-election in 2025, is the Vice presidential ticket of the party ( pairing with a Northern candidate)for the 2031 presidential election when President Bola Tinubu would have been done with his second term( assuming he is re-elected in 2027).
The APC, it was further learnt, also impressed upon the Anambra governor of the need for the whole of the Southeast to socket to the centre for rapid regional integration and huge federal government presence.
APC’s desperation to have Anambra in its kitty and get Soludo to defect to it saw leaders of the party in the South East few months ago visiting the Obi of Onitsha, Igwe Alfred Nnaemeka Achebe to solicit his support to enable the party take over Anambra in 2025 and to persuade the governor to join the party.
During the visit, the South East national vice chairman of the APC, Ijeomah Arodiogbu told the first class monarch that the somewhat unpopularity of the party in the region notwithstanding, it was in the strategic, long term interest of the South east to connect to the centre for seamless economic and infrastructural growth.
Meanwhile, sources say the national leadership of the party is putting in place, a plan B should Governor Soludo spurn their entreaties to jump ship. The Plan B, it was gathered is to cede the APC guber ticket to a certain Anambra billionaire with a lot of money to throw about and who will be fully backed with a ruthless federal might to upstage Soludo and APGA. Findings by Daily Sun reveal that some chieftains of the party have been touting billionaire businessman man and the Senator representing Anambra South in the Senate, Ifeanyi Uba as the choice of the national leadership of the APC for the party’s 2025 guber ticket. Senator Ubah who first won his Senatorial seat on the platform of the Young Progressive Party, YYP in 2019, got re-elected in the 2023 National Assembly elections but defected to the APC late last year citing as reason, the need to bring Anambra to the centre, said while being welcomed into the party that the longing by Anambrarians for the APC to take over Anambra was over as his entry had just achieved that: “APC would no longer keep quiet in Anambra, pretending that all was well when things are going wrong. APC has finally arrived in Anambra State”, Senator Uba had said.
Though Soludo has maintained sealed lips over the issue, Daily Sun has been told that there are quite a number of APGA members in the state who are enamoured by the idea of the party collapsing into the APC to provide Soludo a strong and secure structure-which analysts interpret to mean federal might-to run in 2025 and win thus fending off what the governor’s loyalists believe is a looming danger posed by the Labour party.
In the 2023 general elections, riding on the popularity and acceptability of its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, the Labour Party stunned pundits as it performed exceedingly well in parts of the country including Anambra where he was governor for eight years, a situation, keen watchers of the state’s politics posit, has been sending jitters to the Soludo camp. Daily Sun gathered that many in the governor’s kitchen cabinet believe that APGA’s only obstacle to retaining Anambra is Obi’s Labour Party, the PDP having virtually died in the state and APC disapproved by the people. They fear that given the tremendous victory the Labour Party won in the state in last year’s election, any candidate it presents for the 2025 governorship election could easily ride on the crest of the massive goodwill Obi enjoys to coast home to victory.
Osagie Christian Aburime, Chief Press Secretary to Governor Soludo has however dismissed with a wave of the hand, suggestions that his principal was contemplating jumping ship as well as the possibility of APGA losing Anambra in the 2025 governorship election, describing such permutation as the figment of the imagination of the peddlers. He told the Daily Sun that “it is not true. It cannot happen. It’s a mere rumour that only exists in the figment of the imagination of the peddlers.
“The truth is that no party can beat APGA in Anambra State. Ndi Anambra love APGA, APGA is Anambra and Anambra is APGA, APGA is the dominant party in the Southeast, APGA cannot die.
“As His Excellency would always say, APGA is Nigeria’s first truly progressive party and that is why we call it All Progressives Grand Alliance.”
On the possibility of Governor Soludo losing his re-election bid should he run on APGA’s platform, Aburime said the governor and his party have no rival in Anambra: “His Excellency is committed to strengthening the party and that is why we have just finished grassroots mobilization and membership validation; APGA is spreading in nooks and crannies of the Southeast and ultimately Nigeria. So I can confidently tell you that come 2025, APGA will have no rival here and His Excellency has performed creditably well and will win convincingly.”
Reacting in a similar fashion, an APGA chieftain, Chinedu Obigwe said in a statement: “It is a confirmation of what we have been saying that Governor Soludo remains the best and that he cannot be compared with anybody.
“For me, this is a welcome development because it has shown that Governor Soludo is a beautiful bride and that his good work in Anambra turned him into a good product that markets itself.
“Another angle to what the APC bigwigs are doing is that it is a pointer to the fact that Anambra APC does not have anybody that can match Governor Soludo in the 2025 governorship election.
“What I know for sure is that Governor Soludo will not betray APGA by defecting to APC and that he will win the 2025 governorship election convincingly without defecting to APC.
“Governor Soludo remains a golden fish that has no hiding place.
“With him as Anambra governor till 2030, our state will turn to Africa-Duba-Taiwan of Nigeria.”
Though Soludo supporters and APGA chieftains have been idealizing the party as a firmly rooted Iroko tree that can withstand storms of different hues, observers aver that events in the past few years in the life of the party present a picture of a platform on spiraling downward decline.
APGA joined the political fray in 2003 as a registered political party, taking the Southeast by storm. Promoters of the then new party had presented the late leader of the defunct Republic of Biafra, Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu as its National Leader and the move became a masterstroke that catapulted the APGA into the hearts and minds of Southeast voters. The unprecedented mileage and acceptance APGA gained in the region were almost such that membership of the party was a must in every nook and cranny of the region.
The party reportedly made a clean sweep of the Southeast in the 2003 general election but the powers that be at that time, not comfortable with the prospect of the region controlled by a regional party with the imprimatur of Ojukwu allegedly aborted the party’s electoral fortunes through a wanton electoral heist. However, APGA, through Obi’s legal battles, was able to, in 2006, retrieve its victory in Anambra thus the state became APGA’s only foothold in the Southeast. In 2011, it gained Imo via Rochas Okorocha’s triumph over Ikedim Ohakim of the PDP. The party also recorded electoral gains in far-flung areas such as Benue, Bayelsa, FCT etc where it produced councillors, and state Assembly members among others.
However, political observers opine that after the 2019 general elections, the party’s fancy and appeal gradually started fading in the Southeast, including in its stronghold, Anambra.
The situation was exacerbated following the 2023 elections which saw the Labour party making historic gains in the Southeast. For example, APGA produced just one Senator- Senator Enyinnnaya Abaribe representing Abia South. In Anambra, it got a thorough beating from the Labour party. The 30-member Anambra State House of Assembly which used to be made up of almost APGA members now has only 16 APGA members while the rest are of the Labour Party.
Meanwhile, the leadership of APGA in the state has attributed intra-party grievances arising from the last primaries and anti-party activities of aggrieved members to the woeful performance of the party in the last election. A member of the state working committee of the party who requested not to be named admitted that APGA largely held sham primaries last year leading to most aspirants being schemed out. Many of these aspirants, including Senator Victor Umeh representing Anambra central in the Senate, later defected to the Labour Party where they contested and won while others opted to remain in APGA and worked against it from within.
Said he: “Let me admit this; what you call the decline of APGA in Anambra started with the primaries for the state and National Assembly elections last year. We had sham primaries which left many APGA aspirants disillusioned; many joined the Labour Party where they contested and won while others stayed back to work against APGA from within.
“One of the aspirants who was denied our ticket under hazy circumstances is Senator Victor Umeh. He is today a Senator under Labour. Scheming out a man of Umeh’s calibre was APGA’s undoing; sham primaries did huge harm to APGA but we are bouncing back.”