Chief Victor Umeh

Charles Onyekamuo  in  Onitsha

Secretary of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Anambra State chapter, Chief Okolie Akirika,  saturday took a deep look at the crisis currently rocking his party and returned a verdict that total   reconciliation among the aggrieved members in the crisis  remains the only way forward , saying a political party neither grows by crisis, nor by expulsion or suspension of members.

Akirika, a lawyer who was recently appointed Commissioner for Lands in the reconstituted cabinet of Governor Peter Obi administration, told THISDAY  in an interview that political crisis in whatever form has the tendency of undermining the electoral fortunes of the party and as such cannot be overlooked.

Shortly after the burial of the party’s leader, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu in Nnewi, March 3, this year, a group known as APGA Stakeholders’ Forum chaired by one Dr. Godson Emebo met in Awka, the Anambra State capital and announced that it had sacked the state executive of the party and was calling for a restructuring of its national executive led by Chief Victor Umeh.

  The then special adviser to Governor Peter Obi on Markets and Parks, who is also his octogenarian uncle, Chief Sylvester Nwobu-Alor,  was the leader of the group.

The State Executive Committee of the party within 24 hours of the forum’s meeting met to review what it then called political rascality by Chief Nwobu-Alor and set up a committee chaired by the secretary, Okolie Akirika,  to investigate the matter and report back.

The committee’s suggestion was subjected to the party state executive committee’s  deliberations which also voted that Nwobu-Alor and his co-travelers be expelled. Since then it has been series of expulsion and suspension by those sympathetic to the National Chairman,  Umeh, and leader of the purported APGA Stakeholders Forum, Nwobu-Alor, thus triggering the crisis beyond imagination and nationalising it.