Chief Ifeatu Obi-Okoye, a former All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) national publicity secretary, has announced his intention to run for the party’s leadership in preparation for the Anambra state election in 2025.
This was confirmed by Obi-Okoye at a press conference he held on Wednesday in Awka to declare his intention to run for the party’s state congresses.
He claimed he possessed the drive, ability, skills, creativity, and experience to rebuild APGA after its setback in the last round of elections.
According to him, there will be “a heated political war in 2025, and our party, APGA, requires a seasoned leader who is not afraid to take on the issues head-on.”
He said that in 2025, APGA would compete against other political parties like the Labour Party (LP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Obi-Okoye predicted that when LP is done with the Supreme Court, their next goal would be to take over the state of Anambra.
He also predicted that the APC will grow stronger now that Sen. Ahmed Tinubu has been elected president.
He announced, “This informed my interest in the race because we must have a chairman who understands the battle front and has the capacity to plot and confront these issues.”
Obi-Okoye, the party’s national leader, has indicated he supports Governor Chukwuma Soludo’s (the party’s current leader) strategy for positively disrupting the status quo in order to improve public service delivery.
The political party, he said, would grow to become the largest in the country under his leadership and its strength would be restored at the National and State Assemblies.
He said that it was not acceptable for APGA that their numbers in the National Assembly shrank from five to four, and in the state assembly, from 24 to 16, despite the fact that they were in the majority in the state assembly.
“Under my watch, I will ensure that we recover all that we have lost, build strength and capacity, and find alternative means of funding to make the party the largest in the country, rather than the third,” he stated.
To create permanent peace, Obi-Okoye suggested establishing a truth and reconciliation commission to resolve the internal grievances threatening the party’s smooth operation and unity.
The chairmanship aspirant said that the failure to establish this committee quickly after the primaries had been a source of much discord within the party, adding that it was something they had done incorrectly in the past.
“There are always going to be losers and winners in politics, and this committee would give those who didn’t fare as well in the primaries a reason to keep trying.”
He warned that crises would ensue if the hopeless were not given a chance.
