All PDP governors should join APC to move the country forward – Apugo

Prince Benjamin Apugo, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the custodian of the tradition of ancient Ibeku kingdom in Umuahia North Local Government Area of Abia state, recently paid condolence visits to the homes of late Lady Adanma Okpara, and Ezenwanyi Victoria Aguiyi-Ironsi, who passed away late last month. Prince Apugo who spoke with journalists at the end of the visits, called on all governors elected on the platform of PDP to join APC, to move the country forward. Deputy Editor, MIKE UBANI, was there for The AUTHORITY

How do you feel about the deaths of these two women?

I am saddened by their deaths. You remember both of them have been First Ladies, and they hailed from my home. We’ve lost two great women. However, death is a necessary end that will come when it will come. There is no way anybody can stop death from occurring. The next thing we should find out is whether these two women achieved anything in their lifetime. For me, I say, both women achieved a lot.

A lot of people have said that late Dr. M. I. Okpara and late Maj-Gen. Aguiyi-ironsi excelled while in office because of the supportive roles of their respective wives. Do you agree?

Yes I do. You know that behind every successful man, there is a woman. That’s the best way to answer your question.

What message do you have for Umuahia-Ibeku women given the exemplary lives that Adanma Okpara and Victoria Aguiyi-ironsi lived?

I f God permits, and we have women like Lady Adanma Okpara, and Ezenwayi Aguiyi-Ironsi, my advice to such women will be that they should be supportive of their husbands like the two deceased women did.

Do you think the federal government has done anything in Abia state to immortalize Dr. Okpara and Gen. Ironsi regarding their contributions to national development?

I will tell you that the federal government has done nothinghere to immortalize their names. In fact, I have been thinking whether the federal government decided to neglect Umuahia because these two great country men hailed from this place. In fact, the Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, was built here because I appealed to Adamu Chiroma, who took me as his son to site a university at Umudike. He would have taken the university to Bayelsa state, And that university is about the only federal government presence we have in Umuahia.

Can you use this opportunity to call on the federal government to look the way of the people of Umuahia, and establish its presence in Umuahia?

I am an Ibeku man. What we want now is the development of Umuahia by the federal government since the state government has for long been sleeping. If there is anything the federal government can do for us no matter how little, because of both Dr. Michael Okpara, and Aguiyi-Ironsi, both of who hailed from Umuahia North Local Government Area of Abia state – from almost the same community – Ibeku and Ohuhu – please, let the federal government go ahead and do it. There is nothing here to be proud. We don’t have good federal government roads. The road from Umuahia to Bende is a death trap. The federal government approved the reconstruction of that road, and the Minister of Works, Mr. Fashola came here, but nothing happened after his visit. There is no potable water, electricity, good hospital, school in Umahia.

How do you react to the poor state of Dr. Okpara’s house? Don’t you think that the state or federal government should have rehabilitated the house of the late premier of Eastern Region?

Well, I cannot talk about the Abia state government. I don’t know them. I want to tell you that Dr. Okpara’s Mausoleum which you saw during our visit, was built by the defunct National Party of Nigeria (NPN) led government of late Alhaji Shehu Shagari. I was the deputy state chairman of NPN, Imo state at the time. The NPN government buried Dr. Okpara, not the state government. You remember that Okpara decamped from the Nigerian People’s Party (NPP) to the NPN, and our party gave him a befitting burial.

Traditionally as the ‘Opara-Ukwu Ibeku’ the two bereaved families ought to have informed you about the death of the First Ladies. How do you feel about their not informing you?

But you heard them apologise to me for not informing me officially about the two deaths. The first thing Okpara’s son, and the son of Aguiyi-Ironsi did when they saw me, was to apologise for not informing me officially about the death of their respective mothers. However, they said they were getting ready to come to inform me officially. I told them since the deaths happened in my home, I should not wait for them to come, and that my coming shouldn’t stop them from coming to tell me about the departure of these two great women as tradition demands.

Does it worry you that there seems to be leadership deficit in Abia state in particular and the South-East in general since the death of Dr. Okpara and Aguiyi-Ironsi?

No. I cannot talk about their leadership qualities. All I know is that both men hailed from Umuahia, and perhaps because of them, the federal government has refused to develop this place? It seems everybody has taken Umuahia-Ibeku as an enemy ground.

What can you say specifically about Ezenwayi Aguiyi-Ironsi?

I know that she led Ibeku women for many years, and she played a major role in Ibekuland to dignify the women. And up till this moment, I have not seen anybody who will move into the big shoes she left behind. And that means that we have a big vacuum to fill.

As a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) are you satisfied with what is currently happening in the party, against the backdrop of demands by some members that the Gov. Buni-led Caretaker Committee of the party should go?

I have attained the highest position in Nigerian politics, especially in APC. I am a member of the
Board of Trustees of the APC, and also a member of the national caucus. I will always support the constitution of the party. Whatever directive the party gives, or the direction the party is going, I am for it.

Do you agree that the APC-led federal government is intimidating PDP governors to join the ruling party?

Sincerely speaking, this party politics is when you make up your mind of what you want to do, or when you make up your mind of what you want to be, you must be able to know the nearest route to take to achieve your objective. So, those people leaving PDP to join APC know what they have in mind. May be they see APC as the nearest route to achieve their objective. I don’t see anything like intimidation here.

Are you happy that these PDP governors have defected to APC?

What are you talking about? I am extremely happy about the new development. We want all PDP governors to join the APC for the country to move forward, with the exception of the Abia state governor, Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu.

Why Ikpeazu?

Ikpeazu has not achieved anything in Abia state. You see when you want to leave your party to join another party, you say: look at what I did in my present party; look at what I have done for the people I am governing presently. What will Ikpeazu say he has done? We are in Umuahia, the Abia state capital, and I have not seen even a six-inch block that Ikpeazu’s government has put on the ground. I don’t think that there is any other state in the country that is like Abia in terms of underdevelopment. I don’t want to talk about Ikpeazu’s government because I don’t know him. I saw him once in the night, and since then, I have never set my eyes on him again.

Did you exchange pleasantries with him when you saw him in the night?

I said I saw him in the night, and our tradition does not permit us to exchange pleasantries in the night.

What is your reaction to the clamour of a Nigerian president of Igbo extraction in 2023?

Has any Igbo man come out to say he wants to be president in 2023?

Have you not heard of Ohuabunwa?

What’s Ohuabunwa’s party?

He is yet to announce his party platform…

We’ve to be realistic. How many Igbo men have come out to say they want to be president? Let’s not make caricature of ourselves. If any Igbo man is interested in the office of the president in 2023, he would have gone half way making friends across the length and breadth of Nigerian. He would have gone to a number of states with distinguished Igbo leaders to inform stakeholders in those states about his presidential ambition. No Igbo man has come out to say he wants to be president, and if that is so, will it stop people from other zones from coming out to say they want to be president. You know that there is no zoning in APC. The PDP may take their presidential candidate from the North. Let’s forget that unnecessary thinking of an Igbo man becoming the president in 2023. It’s not going to happen. And that is because nobody from Igboland has come out to say he wants to be president of Nigeria.

What’s your reaction to the recognition accorded the Ikechi Emenike faction of the APC in Abia state by the party leadership in Abuja during the last ward congress in the state?

I registered Ikechi Emenike in Abia state chapter of the APC. After registering him, his sued the state chapter of the party to court. Remember this same Buni was the national secretary of the APC. Ikechi Emenike ran a faction of the party in the state, when Buni was the national secretary of the party. Emenike had four parallel congresses but he never succeeded in any of them. In this particular case, he shot himself on the foot. His ward expelled him from the party, and the expulsion was ratified at the local government level of the party, and was also ratified by the state chapter of the party. Finally, the then National Chairman of the party Adams Oshiomhole, announced his expulsion from the APC. And he has not been recalled. Even at that, the people who came to conduct the ward congress in Abia are robbers. They didn’t report at the party secretariat. The Police Commissioner was waiting for them at the party’s secretariat because they needed to go there to give their letter to her. They were also required to give their letter to DSS, and to INEC. But nobody saw them at the party’s secretariat. They went straight to Emenike’s house, and faked the result of an election that nobody attended. The LG caretaker chairman should conduct the ward congress alongside the people from Abuja, but they didn’t come to the secretariat. Forget Ikechi Emenike. If he didn’t succeed when it was I and Nyerere, how can he succeed now that we have so many big wigs in APC in the state?