Njoku: Victor Oye Shot Himself in the Foot

Factional National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Allaince, Chief Edozie Njoku, argues that to stop what the Supreme Court did to the All Progressives Congress in Zamfara and the Peoples Democratic Party in Imo, politicians have to stand up for what is right, regardless of party affiliations. He spoke to Tobi Soniyi. Excerpts:

Last week, members of the Peoples Democratic Party protested against the sack of Emeka Ihedioha as the governor of Imo State by the Supreme Court. What is your reaction to this?
It is very sad to see what happened to the governor. He is my brother. One of the things I have always said is that what is good for the goose is also good for the gander. PDP had been there and benefitted from such things and no one has said anything. So, we should all get up and say something at the same time.

It is not when it favours PDP or APC that we should complain. All of us should know what’s right and what’s wrong and defend it. This idea of praising the court, when it favours you and condemning the court, when it does not favour you, is not the best.

Nigeria is for all of us. Today, you are in opposition, tomorrow you might be in government. So, let’s put the right legislation, the right things in order so that wherever you are, it doesn’t matter, because what is good for the goose is also good for the gander.

Do you share the view that the electoral process is flawed?
I think everybody who is involved in politics knows that we really need to look at our electoral process very well and I don’t think it is from lack of planning. It may be from things we have not implemented, so, when the right things are implemented, the electoral process will improve.

Defection from one political party to another continues to threaten the integrity of our democracy. Do you agree?
This is a question for the legislative arm. They have seen what is going on, they are also quite intelligent men and women. They should address the issue with legislation. They should decide the way forward because it cannot continue like this.

Last week, news broke out that you had emerged as the national chairman of APGA after the court vacated the injunctions barring you from parading yourself as chairman. What is the true position?
APGA conducted two parallel conventions, one in Owerri and the other in Awka. If we moved a few steps back, the party agreed to conduct its national convention in Owerri on the 31st of May 2019. This decision was made in 2018. Congresses were held on the 2nd, 3rd and 6th of May.

As the results came out on the 9th and 10th of May, it became obvious that the results of the congresses nationwide were completely against Chief Victor Oye, owing to his bad performance in the primaries and elections nationwide.
Oye and his NWC, seeing that they could not be able to get enough delegates to be returned as the national chairman and national officers decided to call another NEC meeting for the 14th of May, an emergency NEC meeting.
They excluded a lot of BoT members like Bianca, Victor Umeh etc, went ahead and called their NEC meeting in the Government House, Awka. Some members of the BoT went to court saying that there was something wrong whereby 25 state chairmen were excluded plus BoT members.

For their meeting to succeed they had to exclude those who were not with them and they decided to organise fresh congresses. Bearing in mind that all the party executives’ tenure nationwide ended on the 15th of May, there was not much they could do with time so they damned the consequences and conducted all their congress out of time on the 19th, 21st and 24 of May being out of time.

Oye filed the case he just asked to be discontinued. In the case, he stated clearly that the tenure of the executives ought to have expired. But because they felt they had the power, they decided to damn the consequences by holding fresh congresses on the 19th, 21st and 23rd of May. By then, they were out of time.

So what now happened was that they had ab-initio released the names of the election committee members and these election committee members went on to conduct the convention in Owerri with all the right delegates that had emerged from the rightful congresses of the party conducted nationwide.

These rightful delegates conducted the rightful convention elections in Owerri on the 31st of May while Oye and co were doing another one in Awka with the new people they had cooked up from somewhere.

After the 31st of May convention in Owerri, Oye’s tenure should have ended on the 6th but on the 5th, he decided to go and file a case in Abuja and to try and get the court to restrain me with an ex-parte order from carrying out my functions as the national chairman and the party from recognising me as national chairman.

Who won the convention in Owerri?
I won and emerged as the national chairman in the party convention duly held in Owerri, where we had the legitimate delegates. So, what he now did, on that 5th, he went to court and the judge said to him that he wouldn’t give him an ex parte order that I must be put on notice.

What Oye then did was to procure a lawyer for APGA as a defendant, which he had no right to do; he went and got an order for substituted service, whereby the court would have to serve me by substituted means and told them that my place of abode was 41 Libreville Wuse 2, which happens to be the APGA office and which he was still holding on to.
So, all the services went to 41 Libreville. I did not know about it until he had obtained the order of interim Injunction stopping me from parading myself as the national chairman and stopping APGA from recognising me.
When they were now pushing to get judgment, it leaked out. I then made appearance in court, APGA had already gotten a lawyer and I went without a counsel and luckily the judge said he wanted to hear me and while I was there the judge ordered that I be served with those processes in court, automatically meaning that that singular action of the judge nullified the substituted service, which had supposedly put me on notice earlier.

Oye, seeing and feeling that those injunctions were going to be discharged, jumped into work over the Christmas season and saw that it was impossible for him to go through the back door.

On seeing that these orders were on the verge of being discharged, he told the court that he wanted to discontinue his case. His lawyer got up and said he had filed something two days before the court to discontinue the case.
Now the one million dollar question is why would he, after he came out to accuse me that I was not the national chairman, go and obtain an order of injunction against me that I should not perform my duties as national chairman and then decide to withdraw that case, when he saw he could not substantiate his claim?
After the case had been withdrawn, I automatically became the legitimate national chairman of APGA. So, the party and people can now recognise me as APGA national chairman.
It is very clear, he knew that but also the same way he damned the consequences with the congresses when he decided to take his chances and he took his chances again, he can’t keep taking his chances. He took his chances and they failed him, because justice is on my justice.

Has INEC recognised you as the national chairman of APGA?
This thing just happened on Thursday, last week. So, our letters are going on today or tomorrow and so from there, we will then know what INEC has to say.

What about some other stakeholders of the party? Are they aware?
All the other stakeholders of the party, Bianca and the rest, Alex Otti have been against the emergence of Oye. They have always believed justice would prevail.

APGA is in power in only one state – Anambra State. Has the governor also been put on notice?
The governor is the leader of the party, he is our BoT chairman, as Oye said there have been a lot of discussions going on and so I wouldn’t like to open up on discussions that are ongoing.

You were quoted as saying you would work to bring back all other persons who had left the party?
Yes, every single person, who has left the party and that’s my exact word. We will make sure we try to bring them back. I cited Ugo Agbala as an example from Enugu State and then someone asked me about Chekwas Okorie and I said yes definitely, Chekwas because I don’t think the party has treated him fairly.
There has been a lot of news going about Peter Obi and all that, I haven’t had any discussion with him personally. Peter Obi is an old member of APGA, it would be very nice if he came back to the party as an old member and let’s all finish up the work we have started in APGA and I think Peter Obi is quite comfortable where he is in PDP. It just that my answer was blown out of context. There was nothing particular about him as a person.

In view of the face-off between him and the governor of Anambra State especially, in the last elections in the state, do you think both can actually work together with you again?
I believe that a lot of propaganda goes around in this country and sometimes I really like to hear or see things myself. I have not spoken to the governor or to Peter Obi regarding whether they have any problems with each other. Really, I don’t know. I have never heard them say they have problem.
I don’t know, I don’t know what their problems are. Having a governor as Obiano as a member of APGA is fantastic. Having Peter Obi, a former governor would equally be fantastic, but if they have personal problems, it is for them to sort it out; it is not really an APGA issue.

Have you also met with Mrs. Bianca Ojukwu?
Yes, we have in most cases but she has not hidden it that she is not very happy with things that Oye did. I don’t think she has any problem, but her real grouse is that Oye is not capable and has not shown the capacity to be the national chairman of our dear party.

Do you think the other faction is happy with the judgment?
Well, I think that Oye because of the way he joined the party, he feels that being the national chairman of the party is a right – a privilege that should be granted to him by members of the party. If members of the party decided that they don’t want you or decided that they don’t want me to be their national chairman, I should be honourable enough to give up that position.
Whether he is happy or not, he should look at the way things are. Most people don’t want him, so, why does he want to be there? You can’t force yourself on people. You can’t do that and it is one thing we do in Nigeria; we really try to force ourselves unto the populace, which is very bad.

Many believe that APGA is as good as dead, not too happy with the alliance with the ruling APC. What do you think?
APGA is more or less a sleeping giant and it is unfortunate that Oye was the one who came out to become our national chairman at a time people were also making a decision to rebuild the party. I feel that when people in APGA see that there is, not necessarily just the national chairman but the entire executives because you cannot really blame Oye on its own, no one stood up to him to say no and when you have an executive running the party as a sole administrator, because other people are getting little scraps from here and there, you find out that the right thing is not done.
When the people see that the party is properly run. APGA was not formed just for the Igbo course, it was formed for the marginalised, wherever you find that you needed a platform to express yourself, APGA was the answer and it is still the answer, which we are going to bring back to life.

Isn’t the party subsumed in APC now?
No, it is not subsumed in APC. I don’t have any problem in parties having some sort of merger or understanding but before you do that it must be by the party members themselves, the people have got to be brought into the picture.
A few people at the top just decided that they are going to merge with PDP as was done as well during the Jonathan era and it was said APGA is now supporting PDP and it was also done in Buhari era.
If APGA had to support Jonathan then, it should go down in a convention, down to the last member of the party. At the same time of Buhari, a few people just got up and decided. Even if or when the party decides to have the right impact on the party whether PDP or APC, at least, agents of the party should know and be paid their agent stipend.

Now we have two main political parties, do you think APGA stands a chance in future elections?
Every party stands a chance if it got its fundamentals rights. Even in a business, you have to organise yourself better, when you have no plan, nothing will happen. If you fail to plan, you fail to succeed. So, we hardly plan in APGA at the moment, so we must really go a few steps backward and organise ourselves, build the party again, put the required structures in place without sentiments.
No more you go and pick your driver, or your houseboy to be ward chairman. Now, we should look for the best without sentiments and we will have a party that does primaries and you will see that many people, who would want to join PDP or APC will join APGA, because they know they can go into an election, decide whether they will win or lose.