The National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, Sylvester Ezeokenwa has described Edozie Njoku as a non member of the party, despite the latter’s claim to the party’s national chairmanship position.
He said that Ezeokenwa was elected in July 2023 at a national convention in Awka, the Anambra State capital to succeed Victor Oye who served his second and final tenure as APGA National Chairman.
For a substantial part of his second tenure, Oye faced a litany of litigations from Njoku who insisted that he was the validly elected National Chairman of the party.
The crisis festered in the build up to the 2023 election as the Oye-led National Working Committee held its presidential convention at the party’s national secretariat while Njoku took his to the Abuja Continental Hotel, formerly known as Sheraton Hotel.
A few weeks before the 2023 general election, Njoku addressed a press conference in Abuja, stating that the Supreme Court had corrected a clerical error in its earlier judgment, affirming Oye as the party chairman. According to him, Oye’s name has since been substituted with his, thereby making him the authentic National Chairman of APGA.
Oye dismissed the claim and the Independent National Electoral Commission recognized the Oye-led executive as the working committee of the party.
As.it were, Njoku has not backed out of the fight to take over the affairs of the party as in May this year, he called on INEC to “Obey the judgment of the Supreme Court purportedly recognizing him as the authentic National Chairman of APGA.”
Addressing newsmen at the party’s headquarters on Monday, Ezeokenwa challenged Njoku to produce the Certified True Copy of the Supreme Court judgment recognizing him as the Chairman of APGA.
He said, “If Njoku wants to be a member of our party, he knows what to do. First, he needs to go to his ward and register and obtain a membership card. And if he is interested in vying for a position, he can pick up an expression of interest form. You don’t wait at every election cycle to lay claim to an office you never contested for.
“I challenge Njoku to produce the Certified True Copy of the Supreme Court ruling he claimed, made him APGA National Chairman. He must stop blackmailing INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu. INEC don’t coronate party chairmen. It is not an ordination. It is the process of an election.”
On the Supreme Court ruling that corrected “An accidental slip in the final judgment of October 14, 2021,” Ezeokenwa said, “In January 2023, Njoku filed an application at the Supreme Court seeking for the correction of a clerical error on page 13 of the Judgment of the Supreme Court delivered on 14 October 2021.
“On the said page 13, the Supreme Court while highlighting the background facts that led to the commencement of the suit at the trial Jigawa State High Court erroneously mentioned “Chief Victor Oye” instead of “Chief Edozie Njoku” as the purported APGA Chairman whose alleged suspension led to the commencement of the suit.
“By Ruling of the Supreme Court delivered on March 24, 2023, the Supreme Court corrected the error and swapped the name of “Chief Victor Oye” with “Chief Edozie Njoku” on page 13 of its earlier Judgment of 14/10/2021.
“The Supreme Court, however, warned at page 26 of the ruling “That the correction of the error, mistake or slip in the judgment does not in any plausible way, review, vary or substitute the operative or substantive part of the judgment delivered on October 14, 2021.
“Despite this clarification at page 26 of the Ruling, Njoku and his amorphous group went to town with the fake news that the Supreme Court has deleted Chief Victor Oye as National Chairman of APGA and replaced him with Chief Edozie Njoku.”
He called on APGA members to be wary of mischief makers bent on creating a crisis within the party even as he insisted that APGA remains a united party without faction(s).
