Soludo in Tinubu’s Campaign: ‘Bitter truth’ is South-East must align with centre — Sly Ezeokenwa, APGA National Chair

•Dismisses anti-party claim against Anambra gov By Dickson Omobola National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, Sly Ezeokenwa, in this interview first aired on Arise News, speaks on the reasons Anambra State governor and national leader of APGA, Professor Charles Soludo, has pitched tent with President Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress, APC, ahead of the 2027 elections, despite concerns over alleged anti-party activities.

Excerpts: Your party, APGA, has adopted President Bola Tinubu, and your governor, Professor Charles Soludo, has now been named on APC list. What should this tell the average voter? Is this merely a symbolic show of strength and dominance by the APC? Would the allegation of anti-party activity apply to Professor Soludo? I think it would be good to state that the decision of Professor Charles Soludo, who, by the way, is the national leader of our party, to support the President transcends their personal relationship.

Once you become the leader of a party, the Constitution imposes certain obligations and responsibilities on you. In a multi-party democracy such as ours, coalitions are inevitable. When you have about 22 political parties, as we currently do, with people from diverse ethnic groups and different religious backgrounds, you can be certain that any presidential candidate seeking to meet the constitutional threshold faces a considerable task.

You must recall that to be elected president of Nigeria, the Constitution requires you to secure a simple majority and at least 25 per cent of the votes cast in at least two-thirds of the states in the country. You will agree with me that this is not an easy task for any presidential candidate in a multi-party democracy. That, therefore, calls for broader coalitions.

Those who are well versed in our politics will know that such coalitions have historical precedents. There have been instances of alliances and coalitions before independence, after independence, during the 1979 elections and beyond. For me, this is nothing new. However, our decision as a party to support the President stems from three perspectives, and I must make that emphatically clear.

First, it draws from history. APGA has a standing policy under which the party considers a cordial relationship with the ruling party part of its strategic alliances and survival. You know very well that this policy was adopted around 2011. Incidentally, the only governor on the platform of APGA at the time was the current presidential candidate of the NDC.

That was when APGA adopted the presidential candidacy of the then President Goodluck Jonathan, a decision it repeated in 2015. Even in 2019 and 2023, when the party nominated its own presidential candidates, it did not derogate from that tradition of supporting the incumbent. Beyond the policy and historical perspectives, we come to the more germane issue.

Our leader popularised an aphorism that, in a multi-party democracy, it does not make sense for every political party in the country to field a presidential candidate when some of those candidates are unlikely to secure even 50,000 votes. If our affiliations and alliances in a multi-party democracy should be ideologically driven, then there is nothing wrong with political parties that profess similar ideologies coming together to support a common presidential candidate.

That was how our leader popularised the phrase that progressives are working together, which stemmed from his charge or call during the President’s visit to Anambra. For our party specifically, there is a strong, longstanding alliance with the administration of President Bola Tinubu. That alliance led to the appointment of a serving member of APGA’s Board of Trustees, BoT, Bianca Ojukwu, as a minister in President Tinubu’s cabinet, as well as the appointment of another APGA member.

If you look at the 2023 elections, despite having much of the influence in the South-East, Peter Obi of the Labour Party secured over 90 per cent of the votes in the region. How will APGA’s influence change that result in favour of the APC, bearing in mind that Obi was once a member of APGA and would still have some supporters in your party? Obi is from Anambra and still wields that level of influence in the South-East.

How would you turn the region in favour of President Bola Tinubu now that APGA has aligned with his candidacy? As a party, we have our position, which is that we have endorsed and adopted the candidacy of President Bola Tinubu. That is a fact. Now, we have a critical issue involving a proud son of Anambra, the first governor elected on the platform of APGA, who is also running in this election.

However, in this context, it is better for us to be politically correct as we approach the 2027 presidential election. It is a question of whether to be politically correct or join the bandwagon of sensationalism surrounding a particular candidate. We believe that, before the advent of the current Fourth Republic