BY ABUCHI IFESINACHI, AWKA
Former governor of Anambra State and current Senator representing Anambra Central senatorial district, Dr Chris Ngige, yesterday said he was dumbfounded when he heard that erstwhile governor of the state , Mr Peter Obi, had dumped the All Progressives Grand Alliance(APGA) for the People’s Democratic Party.(PDP)
Ngige who addressed the press in Awka ,Anambra state said “those of us who played one role or another in the formation of APGA in 2001 , we received the news with grief and sadness because they have finally destroyed that objective. “ I had always had the view that most people in APGA leadership are traders and that one day they would trade off the party.
“With all the bogey being peddled that APC is a Yoruba party and APGA as an Igbo party, suddenly and instantaneously they have dumped the party. If IIkemba(late Chukwueme Odumegwu Ojukwu) had been around , this movement (defection) would have occurred because an APGA Chieftain once confided in me that they were using Ikemba’s name to win elections , and nothing more.
The senator called on Ndigbo not to absent themselves from national parties so that they would continue to be relevant in national discourse, stressing that was why some of them in the south east went into APC to create the third leg in the APC tripod.
“No sane person would like to put his eggs in one basket “, he admonished.
On whether he would seek re-election in next year’s general elections ,the senator said at the appropriate time he would make his decision on that public , after due consultations, stressing that his pre-occupation now was how to better the fortunes of members of his constituency by providing them with basic needs , especially , education.
To this end, he said he had set up a N120 million scholarship for secondary and tertiary students in his district, targeting about 6000 students, while about 168 electric transformers had been distributed to communities in his area via his empowerment programmes.
He, however, maintained that, no matter the circumstance , the APC would be re-elected for the Anambra central senatorial district next year.
On the yesterday’s Abuja Federal High Court that stopped the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) from conducting next Saturday’s governorship by-election in the state , and ordered for the swearing in of the deputy governor of the ousted Nyako government , James Ngilari as governor to serve the unexpired tenure of Nyako , Ngige described it as a political judgment in favour of PDP against APC that would have won the poll if the court did not arrest the situation.
