How would you react to Maxi Okwu’s speech that APGA will not embraceOjukwu’s extremist approach?
For Maxi to come out and describe our great and respected leader as an extremist, it shows the level of destruction that he is planning for APGA. Ojukwu was never an extremist. Ojukwu was a man who stood very strongly for justice; a man who stood very strongly against injustice; a man who stood against the oppression of people, a man who stood for equity and fairness, a man who stood for the rule of law and a man who stood for democracy. It is an abomination for anybody, who claims to be standing on the platform of APGA, to describe Ojukwu’s virtues as extremist.
This is a blasphemy of the highest order. Those of us who worked with Ojukwu as our leader in APGA will not standby and watch a man who does not have any political vision to describe Ojukwu in such denigrating words. APGA is a political party that is committed to the vision which Ojukwu represented as enumerated above. APGA will continue in that direction without apology to anybody.
Do you support party members calling for sanction against him?
They should tender an immediate apology for this attack on Ojukwu. But for Ojukwu, Maxi probabbly wouldn’t have been alive today. He must apologise to the Igbos and announce publicly that he has nothing to do with APGA anymore. He has demonstrated that he is an enemy of APGA, an enemy of Igbo people, an enemy of the rule of law and an enemy of democracy in this country. For all these years, he has been wandering about, according to the traditional ruler of his community, Achi. He he has never achieved anything politically. Maxi Okwu was in Alliance for Democracy (AD) in Enugu State. When we registered APGA, he crossed over and had a short stint with APGA. When he was expelled alongside Chekwas Okorie, he joined the Green Party. From the Green Party, it metamorphosed to Citizens Popular Party (CPP). He was the National Chairman of the CPP from 2005 to 2013. Within this period, it never won a councillorship election anywhere in Nigeria. That is the man Governor Peter Obi has brought to kill APGA in Nigeria.
Others say apology is not enough. Is this your position too?
After the apology, the entire Ndigbo should sanction him. He should be ostracized for making such a statement against the Ezeigbo-Gburugburu. He deserves nothing short of that punishment for daring to denigrate our great leader, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu.
Today, Maxi Okwu is parading himself as the National Chairman of APGA. How would you react to it?
We will never accept this. Looking at the short stint he had in the APGA, since he was mentioned in connection with theAPGA on February 16 till date, all the activities in the purported faction they are leading, all of them have been enmeshed in illegality. There is nothing they have done that is legal. They started with an illegal national caucus that has no constitutional power to elect or appoint the interim officials for APGA. That was where Maxi Okwu first emerged and he knew that it was wrong under the provisions of the APGA Constitution.
He participated in it and emerged as the interim national chairman. Knowing that his emergence was unconstitutional and unlawful, Maxi Okwu never wrote a letter to the Independent National Electoral Commission, describing himself as the interim national chairman of APGA. There was no correspondence between INEC and Maxi Okwu. There was no correspondence between INEC and Maxi Okwu between that period and today where he claimed to be anything. Instead, he created non-existent things in the name of APGA and on the pages of newspapers and finally deceived the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) into attending their illegal convention that was conducted by 1.00 a.m on April 8, 2013. On March 9, at Awka, they were purported to have held a meeting of state chairmen of APGA/National Executive Council meeting.
There is no such meeting under the APGA Constitution where you have the forum of chairmen/National Executive Council meeting. At least, for the communiqué they issued. Everything about that meeting was shrouded in secrecy. The names of people who attended that purported meeting was never published. Unlike us, we have been taking advertorials, publishing names of those that attended our meetings. They hid the list of people who attended that meeting from the Nigerian public. Instead, they continued to engage in propaganda that 36 state chairmen attended the meeting. I suspected foul play and wrote the INEC requesting for a certified true copy of the list of those who attended that meeting, including the notices they gave them, because they were always publishing them in the papers. All these things we requested from INEC, we were not obliged with the certified true copy of people who attended that meeting.
On Friday, April 5, it was announce that INEC has acceded to the request of Governor Obi’s faction to convene a convention of APGA on April 8, and they will be attending it.
INEC never said they will attend or monitor the convention until the 5th, which was Friday. That was when the meeting was allegedly held and they agreed to send monitors to that convention. Once I got that, I sent my personal assistant to INEC immediately to obtain the certified true copy of the people who issued that notice to INEC. And on that day, it was released to him. And when we went through that list, it was discovered that 29 people signed the notice of the congresses and convention to INEC, claiming to be state chairmen of APGA. On perusal of the names printed on that attendance sheet, 24 members out of 29 were never APGA chairmen anywhere in Nigeria, up till that moment. They were not known to us. Now, we have the certified true copy of state chairmen of APGA that attended APGA NEC meeting of December 1, 2010 monitored by INEC. INEC issued a certified true copy of those people that attended that meeting. In that certified true copy, those 24 names that are unknown to us, claimed to be chairmen, giving INEC notice of congresses, even though without capacity under APGA Constitution were not on that list. So, it is all a game of illegality. You recall that, last year, Sadiq Massala announced that he had 20 signatures of the NWC members that removed me as the chairman. On verification, INEC discovered that 11 signatures were forged for which the Inspector-General of Police has charged Massala to court for forgery. This is another forgery just to do what is not right. Now, we have requested again that INEC should give us the copies of the notice given to them for the venue of this convention and the time that convention will take place.
The Electoral Act requires you to give the notice that you will hold a meeting, state the venue of the meeting, and the time of the meeting. By the time the details come out, you will discover that they never informed INEC in writing that their convention will be taking place by 1.am on April 8. There is no political party that will give INEC the notice that they will start an event by 1 a.m INEC is a public institution and public institutions have hours prescribed under the Civil Service Rules, 8am to 4 p.m or 5 p.m as the case may be. You must start your activity within time and may be spill over late. You cannot start an activity by 1.am and then invite a public institution to be part of it on Sunday.
The Court of Appeal ruling was perfectly in order and what the Court of Appeal did was to stay the order made against me as a consequence of the declarative decisions. The court was wrong. It cannot do that. So, if you want to go and ask for a declaration from a court, you cannot ask the court that, following that, that this thing should be done. And the Court of Appeal was very emphatic on that. And again, the grounds for staying the decision of the Enugu State High Court was bothered on jurisdiction. The Court of Appeal said that consistently, from the trial court, I raised the issue of jurisdiction.
That the court has no jurisdiction. And in the Court of Appeal, the major grounds of my appeal bothered on jurisdiction. So, the Court of Appeal wouldn’t have allowed that judgment to continue to operate or for anybody to use it if the appeal is before me. If the Court of Appeal agrees that the trial Court has no jurisdiction, all these things they have done, they have done in vain.
