Chief Victor Umeh, former APGA Chairman has opened up on Ex-Governor Peter Obi of Anambra State.
“After he became governor and he was impeached, eight months after in office, I played a major role in bringing him back to office. I had to beg Ojukwu who was very angry with him. I had to convince him that it was only if Obi was reinstated that he could go for tenure interpretation, a matter that I found as far back as 2006 as something that we should explore.”
“Section 180 (12) of the constitution states that the tenure of office of a governor shall be for four years starting from the day he takes the oath of office. I was the one that discovered it in the constitution, it was there but in august 2006 I granted an interview that Obi’s tenure would end in 2010.”
“That was when PDP was taunting us that Obi was a youth corps governor that he would leave in 2007 having assumed office in 2006, just one year like the national service. They would call him youth corps governor. So I read that in the constitution and developed it in the interview published in August 2006. I told Ojukwu that if we reinstated Peter Obi from that impeachment he would file that tenure interpretation action and when I told Peter, he said he would not do it.”
“When I told him to do it he refused initially. He was afraid of Obassanjo and the PDP so when they pushed him out, he was ready to seek that interpretation of the constitution at that time and I used that to convince Ojukwu. He said I should read it to him. I brought the constitution and read it to him. He then asked me are you sure this thing would work? I said Sir, it would work. It had not happened before.”
“I told him that it was very important that we did that because if we failed to do that, by April 2007, Morris Iwu would announce Andy Ubah as governor elect in Anambra State without an election. I gave him the scenario and it was clear to Ojukwu that the election in 2007 Anambra would be no election and the only thing that would give APGA life would be that tenure case. The court would be able to interpret his tenure to get to 2010. It was at that point that Ojukwu agreed that we should reinstate Peter and should now draw the plan. I drew the plan and on February 7, 2007, we were at the Court of Appeal. The Appeal was heard. The House of Assembly’s appeal against the nullification of the impeachment by the High Court Awka, was heard on February 7, 2007, and there and then they fixed 9th February for judgment; two days after.”
“So, I was with Ojukwu that 7th to make this final plea to support Peter Obi’s reinstatement. He refused then I gave him this option and convinced him with it the next day being 8th February 2007. He said I should draw the plan. After I had drawn the plan which we executed that 9th February when the judgment was delivered, we went to Akpambo’s burial in Enugu Ukwu and as soon as that judgment was delivered we came to government house, asked Peter Obi to come there and we got the governor to agree to hand over to Peter Obi before they could go for another Appeal. So we reinstated him that same day 9th February, 2007 when the judgment was delivered in a military fashion.”
“Ojukwu was very happy because as a general, he liked the plan I brought which we executed and on the 9th when we reinstated him, that weekend, our lawyers prepared the tenure interpretation suit and it was filed five days after in the Federal High Court Enugu. We lost, got to the Court of Appeal we lost, but seven days to Andy Ubah’s inauguration, we did everything to get the matter to Supreme Court.
The matter was called up on the 28th of May 2007 and we brought an application for injunction, they said no that the matter was now before the Supreme Court and that we should come back in two weeks’ time or that if we come in weeks’ time and they find the appeal meritorious, whoever they swear in the next day would vacate. Then the court adjourned. They asked us to come back June 14th. We came on that day and briefs were adopted, they rose for 30 minutes, came back and read a 20 minutes ruling that the appeal was meritorious as section 180(2) of the constitution guarantees four year term of office for someone who is first elected starting from the day he took oath of office.”
“That’s how Andy Ubah was sacked after 17 days as governor. So you can see all that I did to keep the man Peter Obi and was able to sustain him and he made name in Nigeria. What he decided to pay me back with was perfidy and because he is my brother, I don’t want to dwell much on it. I can say that I have forgiven him for the simple reason that God has been with me all this time. The only thing I promise to do on this is that I must write a book about this journey because I owe it as a duty to young people to read the book I would write and reflect over it and know how to engage themselves in this journey of life so I consider what Peter did to APGA and to myself as an act of betrayal.”
“When Ojukwu was alive, he gave firm assurance that he would forever work for APGA. He gave firm assurance that he would never leave APGA. APGA made him what he is. APGA gave him fame as governor of Anambra State for eight years. APGA gave him opportunity to be richer than he was. In fact, in my own estimation, Obi became rich because he was governor of Anambra state.”
“If he hadn’t been governor, he wouldn’t be making this noise he is making. So, that is the way I would put it. He ought to be very grateful to this party, he ought to be grateful to the party he passed through to fame. For eight years that he was governor, he never attended any APGA rally outside Anambra State. That was a bad way to give a party life. I did a yoo man’s job in Imo State with Okorocha. He never came there. He never believed that Okorocha would be governor. He was aligned to the PDP.”
“He was telling people that Ohakim would win. I went into that election with scanty support from him and when we went for the first round of ballot and he saw that we had taken the lead, he was shocked and brought small money again to support the runoff and when we won he made efforts to appropriate the glory to himself.”
“So these are the things I thought that I should say that APGA was supported very massively by our people. That support to the party is still there but over time it became latent because we hadn’t somebody who was prepared to invest and harness the potentials of the party in the zone. He spent more time playing with the PDP at the centre and what made him derail completely now was that as soon as he handed over power to our incumbent governor, he was lured to believe that he was going to become an officer of the government of Nigeria in Jonathan’s cabinet or that he would be a minister. He went in pursuit of that ministerial appointment.”
“The day he presented his stewardship on the 8th of March 2014 at the Women’s Development Centre, Awka, Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala was there and announced to everybody present that the Federal Government wanted to make use of Obi and that there would be no rest for him. When Governor Obiano was inaugurated the representatives of President Jonathan, Senator Ben Obi announced publicly that Peter Obi was joining the federal Executive Council at the Alex Ekweme Square. So with that he had accomplished his project in APGA and it was time for him to move on and when he went for that ministerial appointment, forces in the PDP and the Presidency at that time frustrated him.”
“That position was given to Osita Chidoka so as he was hanging around, another project was sold to him to come over to PDP and be part of Jonathan’s presidential election so that at the end of the exercise if Jonathan wins, he would become a major player in the government of President Jonathan. He made efforts to leave the party and before he did he tried to destabilize our party.”
“He took the House of Rep members of APGA at that time to PDP. He was making noise about it in the newspaper that APGA was falling. Then on October 7th, he defected to PDP. He organised a visit from PDP stalwarts in the Southeast in Onitsha and declared for PDP. The man who we fought for and got Andy Ubah out of power. As the 2010 governorship election was approaching there was another case called governor in waiting case where Andy Ubah tried to get the Court of Appeal to declare him governor elect that Obi had served out his tenure that the Supreme Court asked him to vacate and now four years had gone that he would now assume his own mandate. The fight was there.” “Of course it got to a point that the impossible nearly happened but it took the roaring voice of Ojukwu to say that if that happened, there would be another civil war in Nigeria. That was when we didn’t know what to do again and there was a potent threat that the Court of Appeal was poised to do that.”
“I called all the correspondents in Enugu here to Ojukwu’s home in the evening and he roared. He said the constitution of Nigeria must be followed. If anything unconstitutional happened there would be another civil war. It was published front page news the next day everywhere. It was published the day the panel had even come to Enugu to deliver that judgment so because of the tension it generated, I think it was Senator Bariya Amange from Bayelsa that moved a motion of urgent national importance at the Senate that Ojukwu said there would be another civil war. It was extensively discussed in the plenary that day. A week after the panel dismissed the suit by Andy Ubah.”
– Culled from Vanguard