Victor Umeh: APGA survived plot to kill it in the South-East

Chief Victor Umeh, the  immediate past National Chairman of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), is a life member of the Board of Trustees (BoT) of the party, alongside former APGA National Secretary, Alhaji Sani Shinkafi.
 In this interview, Umeh bares his mind on the new leadership of APGA and expectations of party stakeholders from the current helmsman, Dr. Victor Oye. He also speaks on  the crisis in All Progressives Congress (APC), the first 30 days of Muhammadu    Buhari’s administration.
Dr. Victor Oye, three years ago, was  a member of the Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA) and Abia government official. Then he emerged as APGA chair. What recommended him?
Victor Ikechukwu Oye is somebody who has the capacity to lead APGA. He has enough experience. In electing him into the office of National Chairman of APGA, we were conscious of the challenges that lie ahead of his tenure. We are convinced he can  lead the party. He is well educated. He has master’s degree in communications, and he is a doctoral fellow in communications from Oxford University. He has also  been around government. He is  seasoned journalist. He  understands the dynamics of his office and will be in a position to have firm control of it.
On our part, we will  give him all the support  he will need to make APGA a strong party. … For me, having left office as National Chairman of APGA, thankfully to God, I must be a member of the Board of Trustees of the party, so long as I remain a member of the party. That is to say that if I choose to be a member of APGA till death and APGA is still there, I will be a member of the Board of Trustees. So, you see that we are part and parcel of the party. Apart from that, we are part of other bodies in the party, like National Executive Committee, the National Caucus and the National Convention. So, at all  times, we are part of the decision making processes of the party, myself and the National Secretary who exited from office with me, Alhaji Sani Shinkafi. It is a  constitutional thing. It is  provided for in the party’s constitution.
Dr. Oye is coming in on a very strong pedestal, on a clean slate, no legal hangover. The one that is outstanding at the Supreme Court is just a matter, of course, that of Maxi Okwu and that one will die off. So, that being the case, he is not inheriting any litigation against his leadership. So, he will be able to concentrate. This is unlike the huge distractions we got from our pioneer chairman, Chekwas Okorie, and along the line Maxi Okwu aided by former Governor Peter Obi and they used all kinds of processes to disorganise the party.
So, under the leadership of Governor  Willie Maduabuchi Obiano as leader of the party and Chairman, Board of Trustees, Dr. Oye’s National Working Committee will focus on how to build the party, rather than how to contend with internal crisis.
On former President Goodluck Jonathan and APGA support
Jonathan lost the presidential election in the South-East because he mismanaged the support he got from the stakeholders. Number one stakeholder in the South-East in any election is APGA. Because he took our support for granted, he planned the execution of the election against APGA, he failed in the South East. I am sure he is  taking stock of what happened to him in that election. Had he displayed a mutual spirit in that election, the story may have been different today. The plan was to wipe out APGA in the South East and hand over everything to PDP. He was deceived in that thinking by the enemies of APGA  who  told him that if APGA could  be dispensed with, they will have a free run.
I believe in his next life, Jonathan should have learnt a clear lesson. One thing that nature establishes is that you do not pay good deeds with bad deeds. Because we were campaigning for him with all our hearts and some manipulators in the PDP who were overtly ambitious for their own positions in the National Assembly elections got him to believe that we were not even supporting him. These were the stories we were told after the election. They were inundating Jonathan and his wife with stories that APGA was supporting APC and therefore they were given all the logistics support, the police, the army including INEC to work with them, and they went ahead to return themselves and allowed Jonathan to fail. In the South East, you have 15 senators, all PDP. They used those machineries to manipulate themselves into those positions and in the House of Reps. Their master, they abandoned him. So, he lost that election in the South East. Comparing what happened in the South East in 2015 to what happened in 2011, Jonathan got over five million votes in 2011 while, this time around, he couldn’t get up to three million votes  because the elements were working for themselves. I have explained this elaborately in the past. So, that was it.
As for PDP fielding a candidate against me in my constituency where I contested for Senate, despite the fact we didn’t field a presidential candidate, it exposes them to public judgement, how they could  carry others along. It was not only that they did not complement that support we gave to President by not fielding a presidential candidate in my own case; they also went out to make sure that they used everything available to manipulate and rig the election against me. I leave everything to God because today man proposes but God disposes. When they finished that exercise PDP had the biggest loss. The loss of the presidency was the hugest loss the party can suffer. That is why the party is scattering, in disarray because they left the main prize to pursue little things, and the little  things consumed the main prize. Meanwhile, we are in the tribunal to contest my loss of the senatorial election. We are very hopeful that justice will be done.
On APC  senators and the PDP alliance
I think it is a clear manifestation of the weakness of the political institutions we are running in Nigeria. For democracy to be successful, it has to have very strong institutions. What am I  talking about? The electoral body, the political parties, and so on. What we have in Nigeria have been very weak political institutions, and it is through political parties that you produce leaders for the country… So, the main bad aspect of our democracy in Nigeria is indiscipline among party members where people when they get the opportunity to get into exalted positions place themselves above their parties. They rebuff  every move aimed at keeping the party vision intact. At the National Assembly, it was an embarrassment that on the day the National Assembly was inaugurated,  the National Chairman of the party and high ranking members, including Senator Bola Tinubu, were at the International Conference Centre waiting to have a meeting with their elected lawmakers, waiting for the President to attend the same meeting, only to hear that the President finally did not come and that something had happened at the National Assembly behind them. It showed  a  clear communication gap within the system. My question at that time, what rattled me, how can a party want to meet with its elected members in the morning of the inauguration? What were they going to achieve for a meeting that will hold before 10a.m, when the House will be proclaimed? The letter of proclamation will be read by the President at the floor of both Senate and House of Representatives.    So, I think APC did not plan well ahead of that inauguration of the National Assembly.
Again, they were naïve not to have anticipated what happened, because the people who came to form the APC  had different interests. When the people so-called New PDP left PDP to  merge with other parties to form the APC, they should have known that all those groups were coming with their own political interests that they could not to find accommodation for in the parties they were exiting from. So, they will carry their interests to the new body. But at that time, the APC was celebrating that their rank was swelling, without anticipating that this is a marriage of people from various parents and at the right time everybody will return to his or her parents. So, what happened at the National Assembly inauguration, particularly in choosing their leadership, is something that what we call in Igbo land, Izu kaa nma na nne ji. That is to say that people from the same mother will always come together at any critical moment. That was what played out, but because the APC leaders were not prepared for it, they were taken unawares.
APC also mismanaged the choice of leadership of the National Assembly. By conducting a mock poll openly ahead of that exercise, they had already shown the red light to everybody. By doing their mock poll and showing it on television saying these people have won, those things are not parliamentary. You do not elect  the leadership of the parliament outside the parliament. They could lobby internally within the party system, to say ‘support this’ or ‘support that’.    But to go and conduct polls and announce results on television before the inauguration was an act taken too far by APC and they paid dearly for it. If they had had one house before the inauguration, nobody would have been sure of who will win, but they had ordained people publicly and announced ‘these are your leaders’ in a multiparty parliament. It doesn’t happen that way. That gave room for alignment and realignment of forces and they were punished for that. I think that is not something that should not be allowed to weigh the country down. The leaders of the Senate emerged through constitutional means. Even if it hurts the arrangement inside APC, they must know how to contend with it. Saraki who has emerged Senate President emerged did so through a constitutional process. They can’t fault him. And I find him as somebody who is competent, somebody who can discharge the demands of that office. Be if his party leaders were not planning for him to be Senate President, well, he has emerged through the support of other senators in the Senate. So, they must support him. APC has no option than to support Saraki.
30 days of President  Buhari
I think 30 days is too short to assess the performance of the President of a country. What we have been used to in the past had been 100 days in office assessment of what people in government have done. I think  Buhari’s critics are getting it wrong. With the revelations coming out from the former administration, it is obvious that any person who will want to succeed will want to walk very carefully. You have to tread very cautiously. You have to know what you have inherited before you take decisions on what to do.
During the campaigns, there were promises of great changes to be made. But on assumption of office, what we have been reading from The Presidency about what they inherited from their predecessors, obviously they will need time to get their acts together. Too much damage was done to the system. It’s playing out, because within the week of Buhari’s inauguration, Nigeria had no light.    Everywhere in the country was in darkness. And that was a regime that succeeded another regime that spent  about $20billion on power. That is a little summary of what you would expect in other areas.
Interview for Vanguard By Olayinka  Ajayi