Nowadays, it has assumed some notoriety that the easiest way to draw attention to oneself on social media is to author all sorts of thrash about APGA and it’s leadership.
And so the raving trend is that every Dick, Tom and Harry now embraces APGA-bashing as a means of gaining social media visibility.
And most times even pecuniary social media merchants use the same tactics to extort money from vulnerable politicians who daily lose sleep because of APGA’s meteorically rising profile. In a sense, this is the cardinal reason behind Eneh Victor Chigozie’s recent publication on APGA Interactive Forum platform entitled, “Short History of Political Backbiting in APGA.”
The article was a hatchet job sponsored by a known face in Anambra State to disparage the personality of our revered national chairman and create a semblance of dispeace in APGA.
Unfortunately for the pay-as-you-go writer and his starry-eyed sponsors the story achieved the opposite.
While I understand full well that success, especially the kind APGA has enjoyed in the past five years of Oye’s leadership often attracts unwarranted criticisms from detractors and mischief makers, one must nevertheless be on guard to ensure that the sanctity of truth is maintained at all times in the best interest of the reading public. And this latter need is the underpinning reason for this intervention.
In the said piece, the infamous author alleged that Oye’s coming onboard APGA leadership was a mistake. Pray, how could it be a mistake that Oye who took over a party with a paltry N40M naira and an outstanding rent for its former rented office in Wuse 2, turned things around and posted an unprecedented N1.3B earning that ensured some degree of financial autonomy for the party be said to be a failure?
I challenge the demented writer of the stupid article to have the temerity to name the achievements of Oye’s predecessors to enable us to compare notes.
Or could the fact that Oye defied bookmakers’ prediction to put APGA on history books as the first political party in Nigeria to own its permanent national headquarters in a highbrow area of the Federal Capital Territory constitutes a mistake in the warped imagination of the author? Honestly, the only emotion driving this said author is envy, jealousy and bad blood.
Let us be realistic: Where was APGA when Oye took over? The party was running out oxygen and steadily slipping into coma.
Today APGA is bubbling and has become the envy of all well-meaning persons, assuming a recognizable and prestigious position of Number 3 among political parties in Nigeria.
I wish to state unequivocally that there is no crisis in APGA. Just as every political party in Nigeria has its own peculiar challenges so does APGA.
And it is not in any way unusual, for the same trend can even be perceived in the advanced democracies. And this is very much so, because the cardinal fining of democracy is robust dissension. So, it amounts to arrant stupidity when one starts making an issue of what ordinarily constitutes a characteristic process of a growing democracy. It is mere mischief and should be discountenanced.
Oye’s exploits as APGA National Chairman remain a blessing by all standards of judgment. Today, APGA has become a national movement of progressives in search for a new Nigeria, viable and strong, where the aspirations of all can be met.
And so, it does not matter what naysayers think because, Oye will ultimately go down in history as the man who redefined APGA and set it on the path to fulfilling its manifest political destiny.
Chinedu Anselem Nebeife,
(Ikenga Agunkwo)
National Youth Leader, APGA
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