• What happens to Anambra North?
• APGA executive, aspirants kick
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By Obi Ogadi
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In a cliff-hangar move, former CBN Governor, Prof Chukwuma Soludo, erstwhile gubernatorial aspirant on the platform of Peoples Democratic Party will this week desert the umbrella for the chicken quitting the PDP and its rancorous primaries where 23 aspirants will slug it out, to muscle into APGA with a ‘deep’ bargain of N 2billion cash.
The deal , which will see its first light later this week, precisely Thursday when the Professor of Economics who contested the 2010 elections as an imposed candidate of the PDP meeting resistance from other aspirants will also be displacing 22 aspirants in APGA as a candidate imposed by leadership.
Indications are that both Sir Victor Umeh who recently won his battle to regain his National Chairmanship position in the Appeal Court and governor Peter Obi who surrendered to him in a hurriedly packaged reconciliation meeting by a high –profile clergy in the Catholic Church have signed into the deal, hence betraying his self-professed and highly orchestrated governorship course for Anambra North Senatorial District.
Indeed, Soludo had made flattering remarks at a memorial ceremony in his relative in his hometown, Isu Anioma, Aguata Local Government Area, in which the protocols were handled by Anambra State Government employees.
‘You have laid a foundation for future governments to build on in Anambra State’ Soludo was widely quoted as telling Gov Obi.
Insiders confess that the ceremony gave cover to a final negotiation, where the price, timing and other modalities was agreed, a development which may have prompted the repudiation of the guidelines earlier issued by the party for gubernatorial aspirants to pay N2m each as ‘consensus’ is now the name of the game.
But the National Executive of APGA and the aspirants under APGA, including 17 from Anambra North Senatorial District are not finding the development funny, even as they adopt a wait-and-see attitude.
Two of them who spoke to me on condition of anonymity said it would be shocking if the governor can make a u-turn on the principle of equity he has canvassed for close to 15 months in favour of a new deal.
Said an aspirant from the Omambala bloc :’I will not bury anyone before he or she dies, as God will make all of us live till Thursday , after which we shall respond to the new music with the right beat’
Another aspirant told this reporter on telephone that ‘It would be the most dramatic and dishonest reversal for Gov Peter Obi to abandon everyone and follow a new bride now’. Adding ‘This is just too difficult to explain’
Asked what he would do under the circumstance he simply said; ‘It is too early to say ,but if it turns out to be true, they will have to beat me in the primaries to gain my co-operation because they themselves said it that Anambra is not for sale’
The issue of producing a governor of Anambra North (Senatorial Zone) extraction has dominated political discussions for close to a year with the governor and his supporters openly declaring his support for the zone, which according to him has not produced a governors since Anambra State was created.
In fact the government was said to have sponsored a strong campaign in this regard tagged Equity 2014, with bottom line costs running into billions of Naira, a consideration which was said to have reflected in the latest political negotiation with Soludo.
Early indications to the latest development broke when 23 aspirants of the PDP beat the deadline given by their party last week to return their Expression of Interest Forms ‘ with those of Soludo conspicuously missing.
APGA executives had been reported by all major newspapers in the country as having denounced the delicate ‘church’ agreement, which has failed to involve them.
The dynamics to be created in crisis torn APGA amid its fragile but unhealed peace is a matter for conjecture as, the Anambra State November 16, 2013 elections turns a new bend.
