You were nowhere when I founded APGA in 2002 – Okorie blasts Oye over arrest call

By Christiana Ekpa

The founding National Chairman of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), Chekwas Okorie has lashed out at the factional party Chairman, Victor Ike Oye over his call on police to arrest the him (Okorie), saying he and others parading as APGA leaders were nowhere to be found.

In a statement he issued yesterday, Okorie said “The call for my arrest is not only gratuitous, it is a preposterous demand that either lacks understanding of issues being canvassed or a deliberate attempt to obfuscate a legitimate call for a just cause.

“Leadership is not a toga you wear only when it’s comfortable or serves your pecuniary interests.

“I founded APGA in 2002. None of these individuals were there. When brigands were sponsored to destroy APGA, and billions of naira spent to fight me, I chose to step aside so as not to destroy a vision that encapsulates the political aspirations of Ndigbo.

Okorie, who is the presidential candidate of APGA, though in another faction led by Edozie Njoku, said “I voluntarily surrendered the certificate of our great party to INEC in 2012.

“INEC wrote to me in 2009 to reaffirm my chairmanship of APGA. These are facts that can be checked at the relevant agencies. It is also in my book, APGA and the Igbo Question.

“A delegation was led to my home to apologise and plead with me to return to the party I founded by Chief Edozie Njoku and the NWC.

“I really had no option but to accept and I  re-registered as a member.

“My activism and political struggles of the past 46 years have been about Ndigbo; their  welfare in the greater Nigeria and a better country where we all exist and progress as a nation.

“People who are beneficiaries of fraudulent practices are panicked because the truth has come out.

“I have long expected them to throw everything they have at me.

Nigeria’s security agencies are well aware of my residences”.