PPA apologises to Abia governor

Written by The Punch Monday, 26 July 2010

The leadership of the Progressive People’s Alliance has apologised to Governor Theodore Orji of Abia State over the incidents that led to his defection from the party to All Progressive Grand Alliance.

The Chairman, PPA Board of Trustees, Mr. Iboko Imo Iboko, who led members of the Central Working Committee of the party to the Government House in Umuahia on Friday, said the party under its former chairman, Mr. Larry Essien, derailed from the party’s ideals.

Imo said, “We agreed not to wash our dirty linen in the public; so what happened then were anti-party activities by the then leadership of the party.

“That is why the new PPA decided to come and apologise to you from the depth of our hearts.

“We regret what happened; anybody treated like that will react the same way; such incidents will not happen again, even to the least member of the new PPA.

“We want you to come back to the party to re-build it; but if you will not return, be rest assured that we are with you.”

The chairman said the new PPA had jettisoned the issue of zoning and would select leaders who would move the party forward from any part of the country.

Also speaking, the PPA National Chairman, Mr. Chris Anele, said, “We congratulate you for the maturity you exhibited because some other people would have gone the extra mile to punish individual members of the party.

“What you experienced is not the making of the PPA, but a show of incompetence from the former National Chairman, Mr. Larry Essien.”

Responding, Orji said: “I am constrained to speak the way I will speak because I am a governor.

“I have no business to receive you but because of my position as a governor, I will receive you and will not use vulgar words.

“The old PPA was being run like a family business. As a governor, I did not know what was going on and I did not nominate any official of the party.”

“God provided an opportunity for the liberation of the state from the clutches of the party and I implore you to run away from the sins of the old PPA.

“If you know that your apology is genuine, I want you to join me to wherever I will go because I now have a better platform to move the state forward.

“You are carrying a big burden and I advise you for your safety not to mention PPA in Abia, because if you do, people will attack you because of what they suffered in their hands.”

According to Orji , before now, it was difficult to build roads and other infrastructure in Aba and other parts of the state.

“But all those things have changed and the residents of the state are the better for it.

“I will forgive but not forget, because the damage will remain indelible in my mind,” he said

Meanwhile, Orji has again given six conditions that must be met by the Peoples Democratic Party if the ruling party wants him back in its fold.

Orji had at a meeting he had with the officials of the PDP, led by its National Chairman, Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo, on Friday, said the party must make the 2011 governorship ticket available to him.

In doing this, he called on the leadership of the party to prevail on other governorship aspirants in the state to publicly step down for him.

A member of the PDP team to the governor, who spoke with our correspondent on condition of anonymity on Sunday, said Orji also demanded that all officers of PDP Abia State chapter, as presently constituted, be asked to resign and the structures dissolved from the ward level to the state level to allow him and his supporters take total control in order to avoid unnecessary litigations.

He was also said to have demanded that the leadership of “your party at state level be given to me to constitute as commonly practiced when a governor joins a new party,” and that the “National Executive Committee of the PDP make a pronouncement in giving waivers to me and all intending aspirants to enable us contest the primaries of PDP without being held to the two year membership clause.”

He also demanded that “the other aspirants, of the PDP, particularly the governorship aspirants must indicate their total support for ceding the governorship ticket and others to us.”

Nwodo has said the party wants Orji back in the party because he is among those that suffered injustice in the fold.

The governor was a prominent member of the party between 1999 and 2007, before he and the former goveror of Abia State Chief Orji Kalu, left to form the Peoples Progressive Alliance.

Nwodo, who spoke at a reception organised in his honour at Bolingo Hotel and Towers, Abuja on Saturday, told the gathering that he personally led a delegation to Umuahia to ask Orji to move out of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, adding that he wanted all prominent Igbo to join the told.

However, APGA’s National Chairman, Chief Chekwas Okorie, on Sunday in a statement advised Orji not to succumb to the PDP’s overtures. 

According to him, “It is only the politically naive, which Dr. T.A. Orji is not, that will be lured from APGA which is his natural political habitat to the PDP, that is not only potentially hostile to him but infested with political sharks. It is quite easy to see that it will be political suicide for Governor T.A. Orji to move from a position of absolute liberation and freedom to a position of irredeemable bondage.”