Soludo in Tinubu’s Campaign: ‘Bitter truth’ is South-East must align with centre — Sly Ezeokenwa, APGA National Chair

•Dismisses anti-party claim against Anambra gov

By Dickson Omobola

National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, Sly Ezeokenwa, in this interview first aired on Arise News, speaks on the reasons Anambra State governor and national leader of APGA, Professor Charles Soludo, has pitched tent with President Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress, APC, ahead of the 2027 elections, despite concerns over alleged anti-party activities. Excerpts:

Your party, APGA, has adopted President Bola Tinubu, and your governor, Professor Charles Soludo, has now been named on APC list. What should this tell the average voter? Is this merely a symbolic show of strength and dominance by the APC? Would the allegation of anti-party activity apply to Professor Soludo?

I think it would be good to state that the decision of Professor Charles Soludo, who, by the way, is the national leader of our party, to support the President transcends their personal relationship. Once you become the leader of a party, the Constitution imposes certain obligations and responsibilities on you. In a multi-party democracy such as ours, coalitions are inevitable.

When you have about 22 political parties, as we currently do, with people from diverse ethnic groups and different religious backgrounds, you can be certain that any presidential candidate seeking to meet the constitutional threshold faces a considerable task. You must recall that to be elected president of Nigeria, the Constitution requires you to secure a simple majority and at least 25 per cent of the votes cast in at least two-thirds of the states in the country. You will agree with me that this is not an easy task for any presidential candidate in a multi-party democracy.

That, therefore, calls for broader coalitions. Those who are well versed in our politics will know that such coalitions have historical precedents. There have been instances of alliances and coalitions before independence, after independence, during the 1979 elections and beyond. For me, this is nothing new. However, our decision as a party to support the President stems from three perspectives, and I must make that emphatically clear. First, it draws from history. APGA has a standing policy under which the party considers a cordial relationship with the ruling party part of its strategic alliances and survival. You know very well that this policy was adopted around 2011.

Incidentally, the only governor on the platform of APGA at the time was the current presidential candidate of the NDC. That was when APGA adopted the presidential candidacy of the then President Goodluck Jonathan, a decision it repeated in 2015. Even in 2019 and 2023, when the party nominated its own presidential candidates, it did not derogate from that tradition of supporting the incumbent. Beyond the policy and historical perspectives, we come to the more germane issue. Our leader popularised an aphorism that, in a multi-party democracy, it does not make sense for every political party in the country to field a presidential candidate when some of those candidates are unlikely to secure even 50,000 votes.

If our affiliations and alliances in a multi-party democracy should be ideologically driven, then there is nothing wrong with political parties that profess similar ideologies coming together to support a common presidential candidate. That was how our leader popularised the phrase that progressives are working together, which stemmed from his charge or call during the President’s visit to Anambra. For our party specifically, there is a strong, longstanding alliance with the administration of President Bola Tinubu. That alliance led to the appointment of a serving member of APGA’s Board of Trustees, BoT, Bianca Ojukwu, as a minister in President Tinubu’s cabinet, as well as the appointment of another APGA member.

If you look at the 2023 elections, despite having much of the influence in the South-East, Peter Obi of the Labour Party secured over 90 per cent of the votes in the region. How will APGA’s influence change that result in favour of the APC, bearing in mind that Obi was once a member of APGA and would still have some supporters in your party? Obi is from Anambra and still wields that level of influence in the South-East. How would you turn the region in favour of President Bola Tinubu now that APGA has aligned with his candidacy?

As a party, we have our position, which is that we have endorsed and adopted the candidacy of President Bola Tinubu. That is a fact. Now, we have a critical issue involving a proud son of Anambra, the first governor elected on the platform of APGA, who is also running in this election. However, in this context, it is better for us to be politically correct as we approach the 2027 presidential election. It is a question of whether to be politically correct or join the bandwagon of sensationalism surrounding a particular candidate.

We believe that, before the advent of the current Fourth Republic in 1999, the promoters and founders of the ruling party, the PDP, came together and crafted an agreement. It was more or less an unwritten agreement on power rotation or power sharing between the North and the South. We believe that, whatever the circumstances, it is now the South’s turn. Someone from Southern Nigeria, President Bola Tinubu, is currently in office. So, the South has another four years, and it only makes sense to allow the South, through President Tinubu, to complete its tenure. That is one fact.

For us as a party, we believe it is our responsibility to tell the people the bitter truth, regardless of whose ox is gored or how people feel about it. That bitter truth is that we believe it has not served the interests of the South-East to continue on this trajectory of political alienation.

If you look at the data or statistics recently released by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, showing the percentage of registered voters across the country, the South-East accounts for, I think, about 11 per cent of registered voters. The question is whether the South-East, on its own, can produce a President without building a broader coalition with other regions. We believe that the roadmap to the presidency, for the foreseeable future, requires the South-East to find a way to align with the centre. If we align with the centre and other regions, we can return to the question at the appropriate time. For now, it is the South’s turn to complete its remaining four years through the incumbent President.

We believe it serves the interests of the South-East better to align with other regions by supporting President Tinubu’s bid for re-election. We see this as a means of bringing the South-East back into the equation. Since 2015, it has been our belief that the South-East has been left out of the scheme of things in the country. No matter how anybody feels about it, that is the bitter truth. It ought not to be so, but that is the reality on the ground.

You called Obi your precious son from Anambra and the first person to win the governorship on APGA’s platform. Why denigrate him openly for political reasons? Win or lose, the 2027 elections will be over by January 15, but the impact of the damage you people would do to your fellow Igbo man would never be forgotten. How do you react to that?

Emotions will get us nowhere. I head a political party; I do not run a charity organisation. As a political party, we make decisions based on what our leaders believe serves our strategic interests at a particular time. At this point, that means supporting President Bola Tinubu’s candidacy. It is the party’s decision, and, as I said, it is driven by historical alliances, policy and other factors. I have not seen any former governor who was given the kind of pre-eminence Peter Obi enjoyed under APGA. When he joined the party, APGA gave him its platform on a platter of gold, and he contested the election.

Barely six months after completing his tenure, he left the party. Since then, he has continuously worked against APGA. His only mission, in our view, is to annihilate the party. APGA has survived various attempts by Peter Obi to undermine it. Let us start from 2015. Barely a year after leaving the party, he joined the PDP and became part of the coalition forces working against APGA’s National Assembly candidates. This was despite the fact that APGA had adopted the candidacy of President Goodluck Jonathan at the time. In 2017, Peter Obi was instrumental in the emergence of Chief Willie Obiano. However, that same year, he backed another candidate and took that candidate across the state. We have videos of him calling the then governor of the state a drunkard at a campaign rally.

In 2021, he repeated the same thing, supporting another candidate. Despite all this, Professor Charles Soludo, who became governor in 2022, recognised that Obi was a son of the state and a former member of the party. He invited him back to APGA because we believed that building that brotherly alliance was necessary if we were to have a shot at the presidency. President Bola Tinubu, the brother you referred to, built alliances across the South-West before taking office. Even when the time came for him to run for President, he stepped aside from his ambition to support another presidential candidate because he believed it was not the right time for him to contest. That is what a true leader who has the interests of his people at heart does.

A quick flaw in your argument: you said that when Peter Obi left, he still returned to work with the party to ensure Willie Obiano’s emergence. Did he not?

No, no, no. That is wrong.

Who worked for Obiano’s emergence?

He was still in the party when he worked for Obiano’s emergence.

The part of the story you have not mentioned is that all this started when they fell out.

You are wrong. They did not fall out before he left the party. Immediately after Peter Obi handed over to Obiano on March 17, 2014, some Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, governors visited him at his residence somewhere in Onitsha and invited him to join the party. If you recall, he never said at the time that he had fallen out with Obiano. He called APGA a special purpose vehicle.

But you have just made my point. He was elected, helped APGA win re-election and handed over an APGA government in the state when he left…

We have never denied that Peter Obi helped us to get re-elected. But you are putting the cart before the horse. The fact is that APGA first did someone a favour by offering him its platform in 2003. When he was rigged out, APGA members went to the tribunal to defend his mandate. They testified, presented certified true copies of result sheets and tendered them as evidence, leading to the historic overturning of the declaration of then Governor Chris Ngige. So, you must give APGA credit.

Now that your party is supporting President Tinubu, we have heard that in Edo State, the APC expects to deliver 2.5 million votes. In Osun, the Accord Party says it will deliver 1.8 million votes. How many votes will APGA deliver?

For me, it is not about figures. It is about presenting our people with the facts, the truth and, as it were, the bitter truth: that, in this election, there is no pathway for our so-called brother.

As painful as it is, that is our position. It is in the strategic interests of Ndi Igbo to align with President Bola Tinubu’s aspiration. That is what APGA stands for, and we will do everything possible to convince our people why they should vote for President Tinubu.

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