APGA Awka Convention is a Sabotage Of Ojukwu's Vision ---Umeh

(NAN) The reinstated National Chairman of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Chief Victor Umeh, said that party's convention held in Awka on Monday sabotaged late Dim Chukwuemeka Ojukwu's political vision. Umeh made the remark at the late Ikemba of Nnewi's cenotaph at Nnewi on Monday after the appellate court in Enugu

reinstated him as the authentic national chairman of APGA.

The News agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that APGA held its convention on Monday during which Chief Maxi Okwu, emerged as its Chairman along with 27 other officers.

``We are the true political representatives of Ojukwu in Nigeria.

``I can't recount the number of wars we waged to safe APGA to ensure victory for some of our members in elected offices but they have decided to be perfidious.

``Gov. Obi and his cohorts have been sabotaging Ojukwu's political vision. The organisers of that convention are gangsters. APGA never held any convention in the dark.

``The fact that they held the purported national convention in the dark showed that they are running a secret society.

``There may have been a ritual performed this morning, not a convention, but the ritual failed because the court of appeal slammed it on them,” Umeh asserted.

While recalling the suit between Obi and INEC, Umeh argued that when the matter was pending in the appellate court nobody was permitted to do anything that would overreach the decision of the court.

``That was what INEC did in 2007 when Obi was in still court and INEC conducted election in Anambra,” he noted.

According to him, those who have hijacked the party using government and tax payers' money think that they can pervert justice, but they have met the brick wall.

Umeh said that late Ojukwu was always behind him in all the judicial battles for the soul of the party, especially when circumstances became difficult.

``I always ran to him and he will tell me what he want me to say. I will simply tell him roar like the lion you are.

``It is no surprise that as soon as the court of appeal restored APGA to its normal position, the first thing to do is to come and tell him that we are back,” the national chairman added.

Also reacting, the son late Ojukwu, Mr Emeka Ojukwu (jnr), said he was elated at the decision of the court of appeal, adding that ``it is the first victory on our way to getting back APGA.

``I have been waiting for this day a long time to retrieve my father's legacy for Ndigbo and Nigerians.

``There are some undemocratic forces who had tried to usurp the legacy but today we have wrestled it back.

``Chief Victor Umeh has been a stalwart, who stood by my father throughout the process until he took ill and died.

``It was then that those others came up from the shadows to try to take away what we have laboured for all along.

``Today is the beginning of the end for all that. I stand by Umeh because my father stood by him,” Ojukwu, a member of APGA board of trustees, said. (NAN)