By Dr. Chike Obidigbo
It is not all the time that the Queen of APGA speaks. As Nigeria’s former Ambassador to Spain, Her Excellency, Chief (Mrs) Bianca Emeka-Ojukwu, carries herself with élan and prudence that becomes diplomats.
She conducts herself in line with her superb breeding and weaves her words with the beauty, candour and elegance that befits her status both as the widow of Dike Dioramma, Dim of Igboland, and the daughter of Aninefungwu, Chief C C Onoh, former governor of old Anambra State.
Few days back, Lady Bianca took to her Instagram handle to convey her concerns about the forgetfulness of leaders and perhaps, the challenges of midwifing reason to potentates, especially as experienced among contemporary Igbo political leadership.
If my instincts guide me properly, I believe the elegant lady must have been appalled by what has been going on in the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), where her husband is bestowed as the ultimate leader.
Ever since APGA was founded in 2002, by Chief Chekwas Okorie and other well meaning individuals, including captains of industry, commerce, academics and politicians, the party has continued to behave like a spoilt child.
For the greater part of APGA’s chequered history, leadership crisis and structural instability has been its main defining feature, arising primarily from the greed and intolerance of successive leadership.
Whether it was Chief Victor Umeh, rising from his position as party’s national treasurer to mischievously supplant the founding chairman, Okorie, in the position of chairman, or the intrigues between the same Umeh and Maxi Okwu, APGA was always in the news for disputed leadership and audacious corruption.
The story of crisis did not end with the conscription of Victor Ike Oye into the national chairmanship, because when he was suspended, Chief Nwabueze Okafor, who took over did not enjoy a cosy relationship with Chief Willie Obiano, before his sudden demise.
Oye continued as Obiano’s preferred chairman until the 2019 national convention, when the expectation that the APGA chairman should come from outside Anambra State regained popular acclaim.
That thinking led to the sudden change of venue from Owerri to Awka, which gave rise to another parallel national convention that produced two national chairmen in the persons of Chief Edozie Njoku and Chief Ike Oye.
While Obiano threw the shawl of government support around Oye, the convention process and APGA constitution favoured Njoku, and both men went to court to begin another circus in search of judicial resolution.
By July this year, both the courts and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) were agreed that Edozie Njoku is and should be the national chairman of APGA.
But, because the party now seems to have become jinxed by ill-advised imposition of candidates, rancour, endless disagreements, political wickedness, greed and ingratitude, the Anambra State governor, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, appears to favour the Ike Oye lineage, which has thrown up Sly Ezeokenwa. Thus giving oxygen to another leadership tussle in the party.
All these must have weighed heavily on the mind of the Queen Mother, who tends to be caught between and betwixt, nonplussed as to how to make reason prevail in the latest chicken fight for supremacy inside the APGA basket.
Given this scary background, therefore, only those blessed with intuitive perception and literary interpretation skills could decipher, what lesson Lady Bianca wanted to pass by her rendition of the North African folklore, particularly her conclusion that: “No matter what happens in the present; the world, its events and consequences evolve through Time, Chance and Hubris. It has not changed over generations, and will not change in our time.”
According to the Iyom,“Gratitude is not only the greatest of all virtues…it is the parent of all others. But Most Importantly, you will do well always to channel your gratitude, towards the most deserving, and therefore, the most right source.”
Has she tried to mediate without success due to the obduracy of power or arrogance of ego or both, as often located among our current political leaderships?
Whatever be the case, the gladiators in APGA should reckon with the facts of history and demands of posterity to allow sanity reign in the party, which presents as the camel in the folklore.
That, in my own opinion, must be the hidden message in Her Excellency’s cryptic post that “Any River which forgets its source must surely dry up. How prophetic and pithy! Anyone therefore who criticises Bianca, or finds fault with her message does so out of narrow selfish interests, unbridled psychophancy, jealousy, ignorance of the facts she alluded to, or outright naivety.
