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Tag: twist

  • Twist in GE’s fortune as it exits Dow Jones

    The global energy conglomerate, General Electric (GE), is facing hard times. Its businesses are going down despite cuts to reduce costs and changes in management. Its recent exit from Dow Jones Industrial Average Index is another signal that all is not well with the American energy giant, reports Group Business Editor SIMEON EBULU.

    A myriad of challenges, including bad business deals, have edged General Electric (GE) out of the prestigious Dow Jones Industrial Average Index. The development has ended the conglomerate’s over a hundred year reign in a class of United States elite club of 30 companies. Its place has now been taken over by Walgreens, a pharmaceutical outfit.

    The dwindling fortune of GE is coming on the heels of a difficult period for the conglomerate whose shares have more than halved in the past year. GE has replaced its chief executive and has also announced series of cuts in an effort to reposition itself. GE’s exit from the club, David Blitzer of S&P Dow Jones Indices, the firm that runs the index said, would make the Dow a “better measure of the economy and the stock market,” adding that the change is also indicative of the growth of the healthcare sector.

    General Electric is losing its place on the Dow Jones Industrial Average after more than a century in a move that reflects its declining fortunes and a changing US economy. Adding to GE’s woes was the announcement from France, that the government would impose a fine on the conglomerate, if it failed to honour an agreement that it (GE) will create 1,000 net new jobs by the end of this year when it bought Alstom’s energy business in 2015. To date, GE has only been able to add only 323 jobs  as at April ending, France’s Finance Ministry said last week.

    Any hope that the agreement will be met was dashed by GE’s Chief Executive John Flannery, who informed French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire  that the target was now “out of reach” because of difficult market conditions. Notwithstanding the hopelessness of the agreement being fulfilled, Le Maire urged GE to “take all necessary measures to comply to the best of its abilities” with the 2015 deal, under which GE will be fined 50,000 euros for each job not created.

    A spokesman for the French government, Benjamin Griveaux, pointed out that “sanctions must set an example, stressing that “50,000 euros should be applied by the end of the year if GE does not stick to its commitments. When you make commitments to the government, you respect them,” he added.

    The Dow Jones industrial average was created more than 120 years ago with 12 companies, all of which have fizzled out of existence, except GE which finally joined the fray on June 26.

    As recently as 2005 according to Reuters, General Electric was the most valuable publicly traded company in the US. The industrial conglomerate—originally assembled out of the various business interests of Thomas Edison in 1889 — was long without peer in the business world. However, in recent years, the company has been through a painful restructuring that has included the loss of its once highly profitable finance division. It also sold off its century-old railroad business, and its stock has fallen by half in the past year. For GE’s 300,000 employees and millions of shareholders, the consequences have been painful. More than $100 billion in market value has vanished from GE since November 2016

    GE’s ouster from the Dow and the likely sanction it faces from France, are only but a few of negatives staring the conglomerate in the face. Besides serious cash crisis caused by years of bad deals, it has shed thousands of jobs.

    To address some of its cash shortfall and debt overhang, GE unveiled a $3.25 billion deal to sell its distributed power business, which makes gas engines that are used to generate electricity in remote places, as well as manufacturing plants in the United States, Canada and Austria.

    These downsizing efforts and the sales spree, are measures  by GE to shrink itself and raise cash to pay down a mountain of debt.

    GE’s cash crisis has forced new CEO John Flannery to accelerate the dismantling of the company that once owned a leading appliance maker, a film studio and NBC. These sales and trimming moves, though have brought in some needed cash, they have also resulted in the sack of over 15,000 jobs.

    The ripple effects of GE’s misfortune, analysts fear, may not be limited to the US and other overseas countries alone. Some developing and emerging economies like Nigeria, may be negatively impacted and the reason is not far-fetched. In its expansionary spree, GE had spread its tentacles to Nigeria and had entered into agreements and established Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to build turbines and electricity plants, as well as entered into some railway contracts with the Federal and some states’ governments. Ironically, these are part of the divisions the conglomerate has turned its back on and offloaded in its bid to raise funds to address its debt overhang.

    In Nigeria, there is uncertainty that GE might be hard pressed in delivering on its commitment to the government, given its waning stature, debt pile up and the unbundling and sale of some of its critical units, which have robbed the conglomerate of its robustness as an all-rounder in critical infrastructure provider. Part of the projects that may suffer the death knell is the realisation of the 10,000 megawatts of incremental power in Nigeria, in line with the power Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed with the federal government in March, 2012.

    The President and Chief Executive Officer of GE’s Grid Solutions/Energy Connections, Africa, Dr. Lazarus Angbazo, said in a press outing that GE was on track still to fulfilling its obligation to all parties.

    “What we signed in that power MoU, which originated from the company-to-country agreement, was that GE, working with the Federal Government of Nigeria, will invest in the development of new power generation capacity of up to 10,000MW of power – incremental power, which means that GE is going to work with investors, private sponsors of projects and if government also wants to invest in projects, GE will also look at those projects and co-invest. We have done that. If you look at our portfolio of projects in Nigeria, we have got several projects at several stages of development,” he said, adding that GE will continue to invest in Nigeria even at a time projects were cancelled globally because of the crash in oil prices.

     

  • Sad twist to Anambra UPP primaries

    What could anybody have done differently to have brought a different outcome? What was not done to make sure that everything went well? These are the questions officials of the United Progressives Party (UPP), have not ceased to ask since the current rumble in the party, owing to the August 19 primaries to select the candidate for the November 18 governorship election in Anambra State.

    In their determination to create a quintessential, exemplary, and seamless process to showcase that Nigeria could replicate what is done in other climes, they had gone to a great length to detach themselves from the entire process.

    In a recent media interaction, founder and national chairman, Chief Chekwas Okorie, underlined the raison d’etre for this. His explanation was UPP would not toe the line of selection instead of election that has become the bane of Nigeria’s democracy. Nobody wins in the party, except in the field, he asserted.

    This was why the party came up with a constitutional amendment adopted at its June 29 non-elective convention in Awka that all the delegates for primaries such as in Anambra, must be known in advance.

    This was to cure the situation in other parties, where war delegates become products of officials of political parties who come from the national headquarters to elect candidates most times strange to them.

    Hear him: “In Anambra, there are 326 wards. So, if you want to hold elections in those 326 wards, that party must have 326 electoral committees, who will not come from those places. And every member of the party in the ward is a ward delegate that will come to elect three people.

    “It is a logistic nightmare. It has never succeeded. Rather, what you get from that exercise, is different lists of those who have been purportedly been elected as delegates. So, when you now come to the state congress, it has happened severally all over the country, you have parallel congresses. And after that you have two or three candidates emerging. The battle is then taken to the national headquarters of the party, where only the national chairman and secretary have the authority to now sponsor candidates on behalf of the party by signing the nomination forms.

    “And so, the highest bidder will now have his own form sent in, while the losers will either go to court or work against the party, because they are unhappy. They have always lost in Anambra because of this.

    “What our party now did is to say, instead of three people per ward, make it five. But let it be Chairman, Secretary, Treasurer, Woman Leader and the Youth leader of the ward. They are the delegates. Nothing stops the ward executives from meeting and saying you are going to cast votes on our behalf and this is the candidate we want you to vote for. It doesn’t bother me. But the important thing is that we know who our delegates are. Their names will be in our website. On the day of state congress, the accreditation will be in that order. If your name is not on that list, you will not be accredited to enter the ground. And they will all sit in the alphabetical order of their local governments. Then, it is going to be televised live.

    “Then, we will have the ballot boxes designated in the names of those who are aspirants and then we will be calling out the names of the ward delegates in alphabetical order. You will go and cast your votes in the boxes and people will be seeing you. So, if you have gone to take money from the aspirants, they will be there to see how you are voting.”

    Of course, among these were supposed to be 724 statutory delegates made up of 362 women and 362 youths, to give both segments adequate representation and voice, an innovation, which he said was exclusive to the party.

    So, where did the party go wrong? This question even becomes more germane for anybody who was at the Emaus House, Awka, the capital of Anambra State, on that June 29.

    Right there, before thousands of supporters and with the Klieg lights of tens of television cameras beaming the proceedings live to millions of viewers, the eight aspirants then, had sworn to ensure that they would neither do anything to scuttle the process before nor undermine its integrity thereafter.

    Of course, one of them was Hon. Chudi Offodile. Yes, the self-same Offodile, who, on Monday, August 21, made a show of resigning from the party. Why this new turn?

    He now claims that the delegates list which the party posted on its website, to ensure nobody was kept guessing was changed at the last minute and that the new names had no telephone numbers.

    What he did not explain to his media audience was that he had earlier failed in his surreptitious bid to stymie the entire event by filing a suit at the FCT High Court, Abuja, to obtain an ex-parte motion, while at the same time still showing still campaigning for votes.

    The second, was that the exercise should have been put off due to the death of one of the party members during a stampede at the venue of accreditation.

    First, the delegates list was posted on the party’s website on July 14, more than a month before the exercise.

    However, Chief Dike Ogbuehi, in putting a lie to the allegations insists that Offodile, participated in all the processes up to the eve of the August 19 primaries, only to demand that it be put off right at the point the exercise was well underway. Not only did he voluntarily purchase the party’s Expression of Interest Form, but presented himself for screening, after again, paying the nomination fee. Why would he surreptitiously sue the party, at the same time he was pretending to be fully involved in the exercise, if he had nothing up his sleeves?

    What would he be doing with the telephone numbers of the delegates on the morning of the primaries, if indeed that was part of his beef?

    Now, he argues that the party should have put off the exercise as a result of the death of its member during the accreditation without considering the logistics and other factors. A country’s entire football team had perished in the sea prior to a competition, yet a new team was raised to continue. People had even died on their way to wedding ceremonies, which still took place.

    The only plausible conclusion anybody could glean from the foregoing is this is a case of a typical Nigerian who is unable to deal with political defeat.

    Incidentally, Okorie tried to obviate this early enough. Three days to the exercise, exactly on Wednesday August 16, he held a meeting with Offodile and Chief Osita Chidoka, his opponent at the polls in his Enugu home. The purpose was to try to get them contest as friends and members of a family, which has obviously failed.

    As it were right now, Offodile, insists that the last has not been heard on the matter. He has asked his supporters to await his next step. But what step could have been more sensible and honourable than to reconcile himself to the fact that his streak of electoral misfortunes may have more to do with himself than those he usually accuses? Would a deep introspection ought not have been better instead of making trouble or blaming others for what appears some clear cases of self-inflicted woes?

     

    • Chinemere writes from Awka, Anambra State.
  • Take a twist with crotchet braids

    Take a twist with crotchet braids

    Crotchet braid is the new cool! It is not exactly a new trend as it dates back to the 90’s. This chic and trendy hairstyle is back and better. It comes in different style, colour and texture. It looks voluminous and heavy but it’s surprisingly light-weighted. Crotchet hairstyles are easy to create; it doesn’t matter if your hair is long or short.

    Crotchet braid is easy to make and less time-consuming. It is done by adding extensions to one’s hair. Unlike weave, the method of crocheting is to first cornrow one’s hair, lace the hair of your choice through the cornrow with the crotchet braid needle. Then you put a knot in the extension and attach it to the cornrow.  It’s quite simple and you can do it yourself.

    Crotchet braid looks good on anyone irrespective of your body shape and size. They can last for two months if properly taken care of.

     

  • MTN: Twist in the tale

    SIR: The news that MTN has engaged the service of Eric Holder, the former US attorney-general to challenge the $3.9billion fine imposed by Nigerian Communications Commission for the company’s failure to disconnect unregistered mobile phone subscribers is not only unsavoury  but smacks of corporate recklessness underpinning MTN’s business model in Nigeria.

    For MTN to resort to this decoy in the midst of a renewed attempt to secure an out of court rapprochement is flippant to say the least.

    MTN cannot ingratiate itself above the threshold permissible to the Nigerian regulatory laws.

    While acknowledging the right of MTN to use every lawful means to prove its non culpability or seek mitigation, such must be without subterfuge and covert brinkmanship.

    Further vacillation by MTN to gain undue advantage can only encourage corporate brigandage, an aberration extraneous to even the laws of South Africa.

     

    • Bukola Ajisola,

    Victoria Island, Lagos.

  • Kogi: A twist in the tale

    Kogi: A twist in the tale

    Senior Correspondent JOSEPH JIBUEZE, who monitored the governorship election in Kogi State, relives his experience.

    I arrived in Lokoja, Kogi State capital, on the evening of November 18. It turned out that most of the hotels had been fully booked, mostly by those who were in Lokoja for the governorship election – voters, observers, and ad-hoc staff, among others. However, I was able to get one through the help of The Nation’s Kogi Correspondent James Azania.

    I had been asked to do situation reports for our Saturday edition, which must be sent the following day (Thursday). With news reports to file as well, I needed to get a press accreditation. So, I went to the headquarters of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Thursday morning for the accreditation and to assess the commission’s level of prepardness.

    The accreditation took less than 10 minutes. It was unlike some other states where the process is like passing through a needle’s eye. There was no rowdiness or reporters chasing after INEC’s spokesmen. No one was kept waiting. The requirements were minimal. After identifying myself, I was given a bag containing a tag, a jotter, a vest and a cap. Dressed in my new outfit, I moved around the  headquarters freely to observe activities despite the heavy security presence.

    I heard about a pre-election briefing by Transition Monitoring Group (TMG), and I went to the venue. As soon as it was over, I headed for the Kogi Police Command Headquarters, to speak with the Commissioner of Police or whoever was in charge, to get an assessment of the security situation.

    I met the police spokesman Ovyie William who briefed me on security arrangements so far. He also told me that the Deputy Inspector-General (DIG) of Police Sotonye Wakama would address a press conference the following day. But, then, it was getting to 3pm. So, I returned to the hotel to file my reports.

    At the briefing on Friday, the DIG said the police uncovered plans to import thugs and arms into Kogi, and that those passing through the state would be thoroughly screened. Warning trouble makers to steer clear, he revealed that his men would do video recording of incidents at polling units. Afterwards, I joined other reporters for a briefing by the Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room, a coalition of 70 groups that monitored the election.

    On the Election Day, I was asked to cover Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate Governor Idris Wada and to monitor the poll in his local government area. My colleague Azania was assigned to follow the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, the late Prince Abubakar Audu.

    Governor Wada hails from Dekina Local Government Area, which is in the Kogi East Senatorial Zone. It has 12 wards and 217 polling units. The journey from Lokoja to Dekina took at about three hours, partly due to several security checks by stern-looking policemen and soldiers along the way. Some asked all passengers in the vehicle to disembark for a search. Despite the delays, we arrived the Odu Ogboyaga Market where the governor would vote. The road to the town was not rough. The people were friendly, willing to answer questions, and enthusiastic to exercise their franchise.

    Wada arrived his unit by 11.20am for accreditation, but it was not a smooth process for him. The Card Reader failed to verify his Permanent Voter Card (PVC). He was not accredited until about 20 minutes later. Several attempts to make the Card Reader work failed.

    The presiding officer, in a shaky voice, said: “His Excellency needs an incidence form.” On failure of Card Readers, an obviously agitated Wada said: “How can that happen?” His wife, Halima, could not find her name on the register and also had to fill an incidence form.

    Wada returned about 3.30pm to vote, but had to wait in his car for 10 minutes as INEC officials were still stamping the ballot papers. He was the first to vote in his unit. Displeased with the process, he alleged there was “a deliberate attempt to frustrate” the election. The plot, he said, was hatched in Kogi, not Abuja. But, he did not name who was behind it.

    Due to the malfunctioning Card Reader machines and lack of incidence forms, accreditation was still ongoing in Wada’s unit as at 2pm. But, it was over on time in some of other polling units visited. As a result of shortage of incidence forms in some polling units, officials had to resort to using papers to enter voters’ details.

    With several interviews to transcribe and an election report to file, it was an anxious journey back to Lokoja, as I left Dekina at about 4pm in the company of other journalists. I also needed to feed our website with updates constantly, which was not always smooth due to weak network signals.

    While working on the report, I got information that INEC may announce some results later on Saturday. Soon after filing my report and confirming from the Sunday Editor that it had been received, I set out for INEC headquarters. A projector was being set up in the about 22ft by 20 ft hall.  It was already past 10 pm.

    The Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) Halilu Pai had said results would be announced as they came in. Reporters struggled for vantage positions to sit. Tempers flared as cameramen stepped on one another, while trying to set up their tripods. An INEC official and a reporter had to be separated after the former accused the latter of almost damaging the projectors he was setting up.

    But, all the troubles came to naught as the REC announced a few minutes past midnight that no result was ready and that announcement would resume 6am. The hall soon emptied, with already yawning newsmen disappointed.

    As early as 6am, the INEC conference hall was filled up. It was hectic for security operatives keeping people out to prevent the hall from being too congested. Announcement of results began soon after, one council area after another. Everyone waited with bated breath as the final computation was being done by the returning officer, Prof Emmanuel Kucha.

    When he picked up the microphone, what came next was a shock to many. As election could not take place in 91 units in 18 local government area, the election was inconclusive, he declared. Registered voters who could not vote  –  49,953  –  exceeded Audu’s winning margin, which was 41,353. But, the bigger shocker was to come later after as news filtered in that Audu had passed on.

    There were mixed reports by election monitors. The Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room said some electoral officials were not adequately trained due to last minute replacements. It said trained ad-hoc officials were replaced with non-trained one, which in some instances resulted in the display of a lack of understanding of basic procedures, as well as the use of the Card Reader.

    It said logistical difficulties remained persistent, with very limited provisions made for the basic needs of most of the security personnel mobilised from distant locations. It faulted the citing of polling units in shops, open street corners and bus stops and in front of palaces, unlike traditional locations such as public schools.

    The Situation Room urged the authorities to work out better mechanisms for ensuring safety and security without hindering movement, especially when citizens have to cross state boundaries in the course of earning their livelihoods. It also said there was the need to improve the quality of training for electoral officers, including those to be on standby;  and provision of finger-cleansing materials at polling units to ensure ease of fingerprint authentication during accreditation.

    TMG, which deployed the Quick Count system using 300 citizen observers noted that across the state, 76 per cent of INEC’s officials were present at their assigned units by 7:30am. On the average, each polling unit had four officials, one of which was a woman. It observed that by 1:30pm, voting had commenced in 35 per cent of polling units.

    TMG’s Quick Count estimates showed that the APC candidate garnered 51.7 per cent of the valid votes cast, while Wada had 43.8 per cent. Its observers reported 22 critical incidents bothering on intimidation and harassment of voters or poll officials, observers or party agents, closely followed by Card Reader malfunction. Ballot box snatching and vote buying incidents were also observed and reported but in few polling units.  In few instances, campaigning and the display of campaign materials were seen in polling units, the group said.

    TMG said the use of Card Readers largely ensured the credibility of the election, although the biometric verification process continued to be challenging with almost one in three voter fingerprints not being read. It urged INEC to re-evaluate the biometric verification process in the light of the subsequent off cycle state elections.

    The group expressed disatisfaction with the turnout figures as it did not show any improvement from the 2011 election.

    With my job done for the time being, I headed back to base after an incident-free monitoring.

     

  • Twist in Imo governorship poll as Agbaso joins race

    Twist in Imo governorship poll as Agbaso joins race

    There was a twist in the race for Imo State governorship at the weekend, with the entrance of the elder brother of the impeached Deputy Governor, Chief Martins Agbaso, who has dumped his party, the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and joined the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

    Agbaso’s intention to contest the governorship election on the PDP platform has altered the party’s calculations ahead of next month’s primaries.

    His return to the PDP, The Nation learnt, was not unconnected with the resolve of the national leadership of the party to field a “strong candidate, who has the capacity to wrest power from Governor Rochas Okorocha.”

    Another reason, which might have influenced the PDP leadership’s decision to draft Agbaso into the race, was the role he played in ousting the PDP administration in 2011 and bringing in an APGA government.

    Speaking at the party’s secretariat when he led thousands of his supporters, including youths, traders, artisans and members of professional bodies to formally declare his interest to join the race, Agbaso, who was received by members of the state executive led by the Chairman, Sir Nnamdi Anyaehie, said he was in the race to deliver Imo from a “clueless administration.”

    He said his return to the PDP family was inspired by President Goodluck Jonathan’s style of leadership and humility, adding that “he is my role model.”

    Agbaso said he got a waiver from the party to compete with other aspirants, noting that PDP would be a better platform to pursue his governorship ambition.

    His words: “I feel PDP is a bigger and better vehicle to pursue my career next year. The man I admire so much, President Jonathan, has inspired me. No matter the provocation, he keeps quiet and strives to achieve. His temperament is what we need now. People have said a lot about him, but he remains focused. I understand his vision. Most visions materialise with time. I joined the PDP to give him my support.” Dismissing the insinuation of his likely emergence as a consensus candidate, Agbaso said he would emerge after a highly competitive primary election.

    He said: “I believe in competition. I have the pedigree to repeat the feat we achieved in 2011 when we defeated the incumbent governor. I did that with APGA, a party I built from nothing to challenge and defeat the ruling party. This strength is what I am bringing to the table.”

    The aspirant said if elected, he would create 250,000 jobs in the first two years, adding that the state’s challenges, such as unemployment, healthcare delivery, education and security could be surmounted with the right leadership.

  • New twist in an unending crisis

    New twist in an unending crisis

    Assistant Editor, Dare Odufowokan, takes a fresh look at APGA crisis 

    To say the All Progresives Grand Alliance (APGA) is synonymous with crisis is to say the obvious. The party has been bedeviled by internal wrangling and supremacy battles of all sorts.

    Following the Supreme Court ruling, which upheld the expulsion of Chekwas Okorie, APGA’s founding National Chairman, from the party, it was widely expected that peace will return to the embattled political party. The death and burial of Chief Odumegwu Ojukwu, national leader of the party, shortly after, was even believed to have united the feuding factions within the party.

    But such assumptions turned out to be far-fetched as a faction of the party recently got an Enugu State High Court presided over by the state Chief Judge, Justice Innocent Umezulike, to order Chief Victor Umeh to stop parading himself as national chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA).

    And as Nigerians were still wondering what the implications of such an order will be, the two governors elected on the platform of the party decided to return the party to the ways of crisis when they openly disagreed on the level of the party’s involvement in the formation of the new All Peoples Congress (APC).

    While Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State had led representatives of the party to enter into a merger agreement with three other leading political parties in the country, a faction of the party loyal to Governor Peter Obi of Anambra State disassociated itself from the merger.

    This latest development confirmed earlier suspicions that, on the issue of how to move the party forward and the issue of 2015, the two APGA governors do not agree.

    According to party sources, in spite of several denials of any animosity between them by both camps, “Not even the burial of Ikemba could make them come to an agreement on anything. That explains why the two states had separate programmes for the burial ceremony,’ a source said.

    And if members of the party thought the Obi/Okorocha fight and the struggle by Umeh to revalidate his leadership of the party is all they will have to cope with, they must have been further traumatized by the return of erstwhile national chairman, Chekwas Okorie, to lay claims to the party’s chairmanship position.

    Speaking during the week, and surrounded by some foundation members of the party, Okorie said it was wrong for anybody to say he is out of the party. He said he is determined more than ever before to bring sanity to the party following the nullification of Umeh’s claim to the leadership of the party.

    He said the judgement is a confirmation of his position that Umeh is illegally occupying the position of national chairman of APGA. He urged members of the party to give peace a chance and be prepared for a new beginning in the party.

    The curious thing about the renewed discord in the party is that the open involvement of the two governors left no one to mediate between the warring factions. Before now, Governor Obi has been championing the struggle to return APGA to the path of peace.

    Although one of his aides, Sylvester Nwobu-Alor, is one of the eggheads of the anti-Umeh movement, Obi outwardly gave impression that he was in support of the Umeh-led APGA. All that seem to have come to an end since the announcement of APC.

    Also, there is fear that last minute efforts for reconciliation in the party may have failed especially with the return of Okorie, which has further compounded the situation.

    And for Umeh, it is not as if all is over. Some APGA leaders in the South East have risen in his support, urging him to appeal the judgement all the way. Rising from a meeting in Awka, the party chieftains said Umeh remains the national chairman of the party.

    The party-men, while affirming to be the grassroots leaders of APGA in the southeast, said Umeh’s leadership of the party is still acceptable at all levels within and outside the region.

    They dissociates themselves from all activities aimed at removing him from office and called on members of the party to remain supportive of what they called the authentic APGA under Umeh’s leadership. They described majority of the anti-Umeh elements as people long expelled from the party.

    The face-off between Okorocha and Obi further blossomed on Wednesday when the Imo state governor accused Obi and his group of anti-party activities. He said the current crisis in the party is caused by some APGA leaders whose loyalty is to the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

    Okorocha said that the authentic APGA and not PDP’s APGA is involved in the arrangement. He made the statements while fielding questions from journalists at the end of a meeting of opposition governors in Abuja. According to him, irrespective of the hues and cries by some members of the party, the fact remains that the authentic APGA is in the merger.

    “Let me say emphatically that APGA is in the merger talk and we have our little challenges we are trying to sort out about who are the actual APGA-APGA and PDP’s APGA.

    “The APGA-APGA is already in the merger and I also want to say emphatically that if the CPC which ought to have been a regional party, the ANPP and ACN have agreed to come together for a bigger mega party, APGA should not be an exception.”

    Okorocha further said that the merger must be seen as a collective responsibility of all progressive parties to form a formidable party that can stand the test of time come 2015 and beyond.

    “At the end of the merger meetings, you will see that APGA is in the merger. We are fully in the merger,” he said.

    And on the same day, the Governor Obi-led faction of the party issued a statement describing Okorocha’s  statements as “ridiculous and unfortunate”.

    Given the complexity of the current crisis within the embattled party, questions are being asked as to whether the erstwhile darling political platform of the southeast geo-political zone can once again rise from the ashes of these hard times.