As The Supreme Court Resolves APGA Crisis…

EMEKA OZUMBA 

Not a few persons were pussled to learn that it took fifty-three cases in various courts across Nigeria to ensure that Mr Governor, Prof Chukwuma Soludo held the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) flag to contest and win as Governor of Anambra State. The most riddiculous of the cases happened at Birnin-Kudu on the fringes of Jigawa State. However, with the election of Barrister Sly Ezeokenwa as National Chairman at the party’s National Convention in Awka on May 31, 2023 many thought stability had returned to the party. Not so fast, said a few led by Chief Edozie Njoku who laid claims to the leadership of the party since 2019, based on a phantom National Covention of APGA purportedly held in Owerri, Imo State.

Amidst claims by Chief Njoku and his co-travelers, the party’s stakeholders were perplexed, yet convinced, that a man who is not an executive of a village meeting cannot summon a meeting and usurp its leadership. Whilst the pussle lasted, another round of judicial jiggery-pokery ensued with Njoku claiming victory and recognition by the umpire, INEC, to the chagrin of Ezeokenwa who insisted that “three Appeal Court Judgments validated the APGA Awka convention of 2019, which was affirmed by the Supreme Court in 2021, and there is no contention about the 2023 convention that brought my leadership into office.”

Recently, in a well considered judgment delivered by Hon. Justice J.K Omotosho of the Federal High Court, the Court held among other far-reaching determinations, that INEC has failed to show to the court which court order mandated it to remove the name of Barr Sly Ezeokenwa who was validly elected as the National Chairman of APGA in a convention it duly monitored on 31st May, 2023.

The court further held that there was no legal basis or any legal justification whatsoever for the commission to have recognized Edozie Njoku as APGA National Chairman since the judgment of the Court of Appeal and that of the Supreme Court did not pronounce Edozie Njoku as APGA National Chairman.

As the Supreme Court weighs in to resolve the APGA leadership crisis today, keen observers and party stakeholders are hopeful that the court of last resort will finally stop the business of “forum shoppers,” as the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio famously condemned, during the screening of the current Chief Justice of Nigeria, Kudirat Kekere-Ekun.