UGOCHUKWU UGOJI-EKE, UMUAHIA
A group that calls itself Abia PDP Media Support Group (AMSG) has denied the story making rounds that former Chief of Army Staff, Rtd Gen Azubuike Ihejirika has decamped from their party to APC, describing it as a huge joke.
Their reaction was contained in statement signed by Chief Livinus Nwaeze, chairman, and made available to.newsmen in Umuahia, saying Gen Ihejirika was never a member of their party.
The statement reads, “We note with utter dismay, the report making the rounds that the former Chief of Army Staff, Lt Gen Azubuike Ihejirika, has left our great party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and joined the All Progress Party (APC).
With obvious proofs of several meetings he held clandestinely with the APC before now, it is clear to even the blind that Ihejirika has maintained a double-face lifestyle in his political career since 2015 when the APC took the mantle of leadership of this nation.
The reason is simple: the former Chief of Army Staff wants to be let off the hook and dragnet of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and has in fact been so promised by the APC-led federal government.
That Ihejirika should fell for this scam is a puzzle because despite his acclaimed connection and ground-rooting in APC, Orji Kalu, the former governor of Abia State, has not been able secure his freedom from the net of the EFCC.
We are bold to state that Ihejirika has no electoral value. If he has, the PDP which he claimed to have dumped wouldn’t have lost elections in his Isuikwuato LGA in 2015 and 2019.
Why should any sane person in the first place contemplate leaving PDP that has provided the compass for the socioeconomic development of the nation since 1999 for the APC that has given Nigerians bloodbath.
APC as a party has bequeathed insecurity, Herdsmen/bandits’ massacre all over the country, increased bloodbath, devaluation of the Naira, nepotism etc to a once prosperous nation.
In Ihejirika’s Isuikwuato, for instance, it has been a tale of woes as kidnappers continue to visit reigns of terror on the people while the APC-led federal government continues to fiddle over security matters.
Let the APC point out any major project it has completed and commissioned in Abia State or in the Southeast since 2015 (except sufferings and destruction of people’s farms) that should attract the people into it.
Now that Ihejirika has finally unveiled himself as character without scruples, what then is left? The truth is that Ihejirika left APC and joined APC, no more no less. By this, PDP neither gained nor lost anything in the melodrama that played out in Ovim on Tuesday, February 16, 2021 when he claimed to have formally registered in APC.
